While the Other Payout thread is discussing the finer points of SedanRun™, I thought we could take a moment and just ask what sort of payouts would you be looking for and what factors would play into figuring this?


Players want to be able to reasonably advance, but the GM also does not necessarily want to go Monty Haul and have them get all the shines in just a few sessions either.

So one question to start with is whether the baseline of 3,000 is a good starting point and we just need different multipliers for the current factors listed or should we be adjusting the baseline as well?

Also what other factors, if any, should be considered in the equation and how would they weigh in?

Hard to say...
The current run we were just offered last night is for about 210,000 Nuyen, split 7 ways (giving us 30,000 Nuyen each), with a 35,000 Nuyen Kicker if all goes as requested.

Deadline of 5 Days, and the run needs to be seamless. Mission is in a High Security Corporate Location (Semi-Arcology) with Non-lethal takedown/capture procedures as the order of the day (unless we get stupid, at which point Erxanta Security rolls in with Heavy Weapons and Heavy Handed Pacification measures), and a rather draconian stance on firearms enforced through out the city. Needless to say, the team is not really packing heavy punch here. No worries, though.

All in all, I think we are getting pretty decent pay for the job we were hired for.

Interesting.

After the run or if he does not mind disclosing the information earlier (for research purposes), could he list how he calculated the payout and did he use the system as per the book or his own system?

I'm not certain why a split of a split is needed for this topic. The main reason the other thread derailed into discussion of carjacking was because there was a question of whether or not it was feasible. I think that particular point has been pretty much played out, no reason not to continue the actual topic discussion.

The problem is, there's no one correct answer. It all depends on a combination of GM goals and player expectations.

That said, I start with 5000 as a base. Why? Because at one run a month, that's enough to maintain a Middle lifestyle. Obviously, you should adjust this based on the desired Lifestyles of your players, but it's a good place to begin. At the very least, your runners should earn enough to meet their bills. Ideally you want more, but that can come from more runs per month.

From there, I base things on what their goals are. Some characters need more cash than others: riggers and deckers have to spend a lot to maintain and update their gear, for example. Let's say the rigger is saving up for some custom vehicle that will run about 100,000. That's a lot, so I ask myself: "How long should he wait for this gear?" Let's say I decide he should be able to get it after 10 sessions. So, he needs to get 10,000 per run, after subtracting Lifestyle and other expenses. Depending on what he has to spend money on in the meanwhile might mean it takes a little longer, but assuming he saves up, 10 sessions or so is about right.

So, my method is to base it on what the players want. Generally, I find it's easier to focus on what they want, and give them a way of getting there that doesn't involve plopping down wads of cash, but that's the way i like to game. Still, the idea of tailoring payouts to what the players are working for is generally a good one.

@Shev: A valid question.

I thought the split could be useful for a couple of reasons.

First is we are 6 pages in there and majority is about SedanRun™ with a few tidbits of other scattered throughout.
You have to do a bit of scrolling to find those and I may just copy a few of them to here for reference purposes, unless RedJack or another wants to juggle things about.

Plus there we are also discussing the option of gear/favours/other instead of cash payout.

That is a valid alternative and may be further pursued another time, but for this thread I thought I would just feel out what everyone was expecting or looking for in straight up cash payout using the system provided and what tweaks may be best suited to it or what would be an alternative method of calculating cash awards.

@Cain: I agree there has to be some tailoring to the players. It also helps if one knows what kind of campaign they are doing. Ones that are shorter probably pay better because otherwise you will never get there while campaigns for the long haul can better pace things along the way.

Yeah, I am not sure how he calculated the value of the run. Probably winged it, based upon his many years of running, and on our preferences as players, but I will ask him.

If I'm running a street game (which is where I start with new players) I start with runs that should get around 5k per runner +/- negotiation and expenses. After 3 runs I bump it up, I havent been diligent about actually coming up with any formula just every 3 successful runs they get a pay bump and tougher runs, when prime runners hit a couple million for a single run, they retire. This was 3e prices (and honestly probably too high), i haven't GMed up at prime runner for 4e yet, I would imagine the cap is much much lower at where PCs are swimming in money. For 3e we were talking the lowest karma player on that team was over 500 good karma so skills were very high.

[edit] My advice is if your can buy a high lifestyle from a single run (as in not the monthly payment) your nearing retirement, if you hit you can buy a luxury lifestyle per run you went too far. This is just a guess but I'm guessing about 10% increase per run success is about right. 15% would have you probably retire around 50 successes or so (which is probably more realistic but kills long term play), 5% would be over 100. I think, i haven't done the math, just eyeballing it.

I'd consider how simple and/or easy the job's supposed to be, along with the skill levels of the runners. Simple, low risk jobs should pay less, and if a team hasn't done a job in weeks and passes up an easy one that'll pay the rent then it's their own fault if the landlord kicks 'em out. Babysitting some low-level wageslave manager shouldn't be worth as much as extracting his boss's boss's pet technomancer, no matter if you're street scum or Clockwork.

And don't forget about other expenses, like ammo, medical, reagents (like for spirit binding), and the sort. Sure, ten jobs at ten grand each will get you enough for that ¥100,000 vehicle you're saving up for, but if you've gotta replace a good SIN and half a dozen fake licenses because the Knight caught your SINless ass, or that tricked out Fly Spy that got stepped on, then you're gonna have to do more than those ten to get the cred you need.

Those are important factors, too, but they need to be taken in context of what's standard for your game.

If I set the base pay for a run at 5000, then a simple milk run will be worth about half that, and a tough run will be worth double. In this case, that gives us payouts of 2500 and 10,000 respectively. However, if I'm running a higher cash campaign, my base run will pay 10,000. Thus, the milk run is now worth 5000, and the tough mudder 20,000. As a benefit, the players will be able to tell exactly what they're supposed to get, and I won't have to do a lot of negotiating with the players (not the characters, the players) about how much a given run should be worth.



You're right, you definitely need to consider the net gain for the players, and not the gross. You also have to subtract out their lifestyle costs and the like when you're trying to figure the rate at which they can get their toys What's important is that you consider it in terms of player goals-- how long you think it'll take for them to get to what they want. There are many things that go into it, as you described.

In a campaign, it will largely depends on the tone and settings.

When I GM one-shot games with friends, I'll usually pay:
- about 2000 nuyens for starting runners with no experience and no reputation. It's a low pay, but there are many people who call themselves runners and are desperate for a job.
- about 5000 nuyens for runners with a few jobs behind them.
- about 10k for veteran runners
- lots of money when the PC are past the point where they care about it.

This is a baseline, that can be divided by two for milk runs and multiplied by two for big jobs.

After reading suggestions from both threads I think the best way to give advice for starting players GMs is to get away from the idea of "baseline" figures and focus more on the different factors that affect the price; for example lifestyle costs, player expectations, job difficulty, job difficulty that the players know about, expenses, runner reputation etc etc. In that way you guide the fresh GMs to creating figures that are more based on the runs they're putting the players through and also the players themselves.

I don't feel that discarding the idea of baselines entirely is quite wise. While all these factors should contribute to what the Johnson is willing to pay for the mission, the GM and, in-character, the Johnson, needs to keep in mind that he is after all enlisting the services of a freelance black operations team, a team with a unique and broad skill-set, who are unlikely to take insultingly low paying jobs gladly.

After all, if the Runners perceive that the risk-to-reward ratio for the Run is going to be critically low, they can just walk away and steal an SUV to sell to a chop shop. Or hack into random low-rating commlinks to transfer money to themselves. Or any of a number of relatively small-time crimes they can easily perpetrate which will bring enough money to keep the landlord off their back, without entailing nearly as much risk as the exciting opportunities to get shot at offered by Mr. Johnson.

If knocking over a Stuffer Shack seems like a more profitable way to spend their time, they're going to ignore Mr. Johnson. So Mr. Johnson should not be so miserly that knocking over Stuffer Shacks seems more profitable.

I think Riggers have become problematic in this regard in 4th and 5th Ed. In older additions everyone had very real risks of losing gear. However, now it seems that riggers are really the only archetype with the potential for losing 10s of thousands of NY every run.

Because of this my group tend to see rigger gear as team gear. This spreads the cost around and also makes the team value the gear more. They may insist that the rigger not bring 19 drones to each fight and instead try and get them to use a couple with maximum tactical benefit. Of-course if the team doesn't think that the rigger needs a hotted up Nightsky then he's free to purchase it for himself

Heh, doesn't need to be 4th or 5th edition for that. Player stupidity can contribute, regardless of the game version.

Was listening to a group in SR3 rules, and in one game session the team rigger had come to a contact's garage only to find the guy shot & bleeding out. Rather than call a fixer or the team magician for help, she calls local emergency services and then high tails it out of there, leaving her mechanic (who was SINless) and her van that had an excess of ¥80,000 worth of add-ons behind.

I kind of agree and I kind of don't.

What the runners should be paid should be set before the game begins, via a discussion between the players and GM, over what a "standard payment" is in that campaign. Runners are professionals, they should know what their services are worth. This isn't exactly a baseline, since this amount will vary from game to game, but everyone should know what's normal. From there, they can gauge the risks and judge accordingly.

That said, the idea of a baseline in the core rulebook has merit, because it provides a starting point for both players and GM to figure out what a good payment is. It should just be an idea, not set in stone, and taken with a whole shaker of salt; but it might give people an idea of what different payment levels means to a game.

It has been Mentioned in another thread I think, but the house rules by AAS work quite nicely for me. The blog-article on this topic also is quite good but in german, so I will only state the blank facts:

Isath: Let's assume a group of five - Hacker, Magician, Street Samurai, Face, and a wildcard.

Let's assume a starting group, fresh out of chargen.

Your rates for a Simple Run would be 1,250 per character, or 6,250 total.

I can already tell you this is fail, for, as I've stated previously, you can sell one stolen Rover 2068 for 7,500 or 83.333~% of what they can get for selling one stolen SUV.

The kind of work that it would take to infiltrate an office with low security would easily be worth the work of stealing two Rovers, of 15,000 worth; your offer is now down to 41.67% from what they can make by spending the night doing something which is far, far less likely to get them shot at, or, indeed, even pursued by anyone.


Honestly, I'd set the baselines not per-character, but per-job. It's no matter to the Johnson how many people you use to get it done, just so long as it gets done. If you want to solo it and can pull it off, bully for you (but don't expect an advance, since you're doing something with a high risk of failure,) and if you want to recruit Ocean's 21 to make a spectacular heist of the job, so be it, but don't expect any more money.

So, I'm going to propose my own suggestions here, using the Stolen Car Baseline.


Milk Run: A job which runs practically no risk for roughly one night's work, likely to be a contracted piece of legwork in someone else's Shadowrun, something that other, better Runners don't have the time to do themselves but nevertheless need to have done and absolutely must not fail (or they'd pay a ganger a few hundred to do it), or the kind of thing you'd hire a private investigator to do, but want to cut around the "has to obey the law" bullshit.
Ex: Planting a tracking beacon in a standard consumer or commercial vehicle, spending a night on stake-out somewhere you won't be hassled or attacked, hacking into a consumer commlink to acquire incriminating evidence, summoning a Spirit for a temporary service which will not attract any astral investigation.
Pay: 7,500¥; or, the price of one chopped Rover 2068.

Simple Run: A job which carries some risk of conflict, but will not bring more than a cursory response from law enforcement and will not bring the group into conflict with any Megacorps.
Ex: Planting tracking devices on a local delivery corporation's entire delivery fleet, spending a night on stake-out in the Barrens, hacking into an amateur hacker's commlink (Skill 4, Rating 3), penetrating a Stuffer Shack's physical and Matrix security, summoning a Spirit to provide someone with a trump card in battle against gangers, the Food Fight introduction encounter and a follow-up night's work.
Pay: 15,000¥; or the price of two chopped Rovers 2068.

Easy Run: One explicit open conflict encounter, or one run which has a moderate level of difficulty but relatively little liklihood of open conflict.
Ex: Being hired to drive into the Barrens and shoot up a small-time gang hard enough that they won't recover, spending a few nights staking out a Vory operation, hacking into a good hacker's commlink (Skill 6, Rating 4), penetrating the physical, Matrix and Astral security of a local firm which does enough business to retain armed guards at all hours of day and night, summoning a Spirit for something that will require you cover your Astral tracks, the On the Run published adventure.
Pay: 33,000¥, or the price of one chopped Nordkapp Zugsmaschine w/trailer, empty.

Standard Run: One difficult open conflict encounter against significant opponents, one run which has a moderate level of difficulty and a good liklihood of open conflict more than once.
Ex: Being hired to attack a team of Shadowrunners who have no particular reason to believe anyone's coming for them, infiltrating a gang affiliated with organized crime, being hired to penetrate the physical, astral, and matrix security of a location which has significant quantities of all three and is heavily guarded at all hours of day and night.
Pay: 66,000¥, or the price of two chopped Nordkapp Zugsmaschines w/trailers, empty.

Difficult Run: Assassination of someone who's aware that a threat is coming, or is protected day and night by personal security detail, one run which has a higher-than-moderate level of difficulty and a good likelihood of open conflict more than once.
Ex: Assassinating a high officer of a nationwide corp, tracking down and eliminating a Shadowrunner who's in hiding, infiltrating a local organized crime operation to bring it all down, being hired to penetrate the physical, astral, and matrix security of an off-the-books black location in the Barrens.
Pay: 165,000¥, or the price of five chopped Nordkapp Zugsmaschines w/trailers, empty.

Ridiculous Run: Open conflict with Threats, Running against a AAA Mega.
Ex: Extracting someone alive from Bug City, Assassinating the highest echelons of an organized crime family, penetrating an MCT Zero-Zone.
Pay: Name your price.

Now, some variance should occur, of course, but no combination of run difficulty and undesirability of the group should ever fall below getting up, walking away from the table, and stealing a Rover 2068, or the group is going to do exactly that. Also note that paying in kind is something the group will probably be willing to accept, but they're going to want a lot more "kind" than hard nuyen. You can't substitute, for example, an Ares Heavy MP Laser for 30,000 nuyen and try to pay the group with an Ares Heavy MP and 3,000¥ for an Easy run. If you want to pay in kind, you should value the "kind" at 30% of its buy value - or IOW, its chop value. So that 30,000¥ laser would be worth about 9,000¥ in payment.

That is, if you play fresh put of gen, as automatic n00b-status. The thing there is, that the n00b, could make more money, by stealing a car (and remain a car thief), but not more reputation as a shadowrunner. If he does some runs though, he can hope to gain more money, in the future (as a shadowrunner). There are quite a few thoughts on this, in the original article (also involving Johnsons and teams), but like I said, it is german. Also, the article is from SR4 times, I am not sure, if the numbers need some adjustment, can't be all that much though.

Since I'm quite adamant about ignoring the existence of Shadowrun 5th Edition, then the article is in accord with me on that point.


Remember, just because someone is fresh out of chargen does not mean they are not already a Shadowrunner. A Chargen character is already possessed of a unique set of skills, abilities and equipment, which make them uniquely suited for the sort of work Mr. Johnson might desire to have done. Perhaps their skills are not as highly-rated as those of others in the business, perhaps their abilities are not at the heights of potency and perhaps their equipment is not the very best that money can buy...

But they are still a freelance black operations team. You're not hiring some gang-bangers to run a half-hearted distraction, you're hiring a group of people who front themselves as professional Shadowrunners to take your money to acomplish your objectives. Being niggardly with the talent - whom you have, I will point out, already paid a Fixer to acquaint you with - is a good way to find yourself without any talent at all, and you're as likely to piss off the Fixer as he is to get pissed off with the Runners, if they turn you down and go steal an SUV.

Better to be miserly with the advance and generous with the full payment than otherwise. "<Fixer> says you can do the job, but I don't know you from Nixon. I'm not going to lay down good nuyen on total unknowns, so you get 10% advance and no more. You bring in the goods, you get the whole shot, fair and square. Do we have a deal?"

...and I definitely am not going to blame you for that.



My point exactly. It depends on campaign and character, but I would not automaticly see a fresh charakter as a n00b, while it appears as though, you did. So to take your example, for a group of 5, more or less professional runners, semi-prof or shadowpunk level, a simple run would net about 2.500 - 5.000 per person or 12.500 - 25.000 in total. Works out fine I think.

As for the point of the contact and hire thing: There are variables. Sometimes you hire the new guy. There is such thing as street-level. It's not always a team that can match a professional blackops team, freelance or not. Sometimes a job is about making or fixing a reputation....and so on.

If a team's reputation is garbage, you still shouldn't try to pay them an insultingly low amount which is less than they can make by boosting SUVs.

Either pay them the decent baseline, or don't pay them at all and make it clear that they're doing this job to salvage their reputations, not pad out their checkbooks.

Yeah... shouldn't, in a fair or even a black and white kind of world.

While I do share the opinion, that being a shadowrunner should pay off, I do not think, that it always and immediately does. That, however, is more a matter of campaign-detail. A discussion about, if there are newbies, wannabes, underpayed shadowscum or runners that are screwed over, is sort of besides the point, not to say pointless.

The thing is, the player characters aren't wannabes. Not unless they screw up. And if they're "newbies", it's worth noting that they're not new at doing whatever they're good at. If I'm a decker used to cracking government systems for the mob, I'm not going to suddenly accept a pay cut because now I'm cracking corp systems for a run.

I mean, say you've got a drek-hot decker (got his start in the mob before he "erased" himself to start a new life), a fantastic infiltrator (former Tir Ghost), a mage who was born on the street which is the only reason he didn't graduate in the top 1% of MIT&M, and an adept with unparallelled gun skills. These are all easily starting characters, and all very highly skilled. Highly skilled people doing dangerous work command prices to match. If you offer the above team the "opportunity" to commit B&E for a paltry 1,250 each, what do you think their reaction would be? That's right, they walk away from the table. There's negotiating up to a higher price, and there's just being jerked around. They may not go around jacking cars for their money, but they can reasonably do just about any activity and make more money for less risk. The only kind of reason they wouldn't walk out is a meta one: they don't want to derail the campaign, or they're new players who aren't confident in their options, or maybe some other reason.

In this kind of world, shadowrunning would almost cease to exist. No one with the skillset would enter the profession because no one wants to take huge risks for tiny cash payouts with the vague hope that further down the line some other Johnson won't stiff them quite so hard.

Understanding SedanRun is crucial to understanding what to pay your runners. If you don't know the kind of money they could be making doing other activities, how can you expect to gauge how much nuyen their time and skills are worth? And that's not even factoring in risks!

If you really want to play up the newbie/bad rep angle, have that reflect in their advance, as was previously mentioned. Every runner knows that you always go for half up front, but if you're new or trying to reestablish yourself, then obviously you can't command the normal advance. The work itself is still worth the same amount, and if it doesn't get done, it doesn't get done. No skin off the Johnson's nose, he barely paid you anything in advance.