I'm going to be giving my group a big run, but because of all the costs associated with it Mr. J is going to have to give them a large up-front payment. How then do I stop them from disappearing with the down payment?

The best I can come up with is a limo ride you'll later regret:

The limo is sterilized before hand, and is bugged for audio, video, and with fiber-optics. They've got your voice, picture and the mage in the front seat can see your aura and cast spells on you if needed.
After you get out, they meticulously go over the entire car looking for hair and skin that you've left behind to use as material link. The wine glasses are saved for passable saliva sample.
I'm wondering if I should have the mage cast healthy glow to make sure you're shedding, or if people would recognize the spell being cast on them. (would it matter if the mage did it after the deal was finished, just before you get out of the car?)

Yes, taking ritual samples of the runners sounds like a good plan. Otherwise (or maybe also), Mr. J's organization would have been building an extensive dossier on the runners beforehand: places where they live and hang out, contacts, etc.

A Mr J wouldn't usually go to all this trouble for a normal run, but for a big one yes, this can be expected. You can roll various perception tests for the runners to notice they are being shadowed and profiled. Mr J will be discreet about it, but if a runner confronts him, he isn't going to be apologetic. "What did you expect?" is gonna be his line. Professionals should understand. Professionals should also consider changing SINs and place where they live and hang out, at least for a while after the mission.

Any use of magic by either party during any meeting is a huge no-no, so I doubt they'd do that.

Basically, a Mr J paying 100 000 nuyen up front is certainly going to make sure the runners don't disapear with the cash.

Sudden, unexpected cranial bombs work wonders for improving loyalty.

And any runner worth shelling out for the mucha credits would be able to confound any methods you care to track him down with. After all, you did hire him for his ability to be discrete, yes? If so, professional Johnsons would understand that such methods are futile. Afterall, when the Johnson complain about them to other fixers/johnsons, they'll say,"What did you expect?"

Another tactic is the credstick. Screamers and tell-tales will give the Johnson a trail to follow, you could even have the program jump stick to stick so even if they transfer the credit, they get followed. Also, the 'vanashing money' concept is very good in these scenarios.

But remember, the only time a Johnson would use the huge up-front payment is they are hiring a suicide team or some other double-cross. Maybe the runners ticked off the wrong corp and their are being hired to walk into an ambush.

If Mr. J has that much time, manpower, and magical backup to do all this, why does he need the runners?

Any job that required that much nuyen up front would only be given to a Fixer that Mr. J has worked with before and trusts to get the job done. Any sane Fixer would only give that much upfront to a runner team he knows, has an established track record, and that he trusts to behave professionally.

If the Fixer wouldn't trust the runners to do the job instead of skipping, he'd never give them the job in the first place. If they do skip with the money anyway, they've just earned the Bad Reputation and Hunted disads. They'll have a hard time working again in that town, and no one will ever give them money upfront again.

Moving and/or changing IDs would burn most of that 100,000 nuyen anyway.

-------------------
Now from the Runner's POV.

If Mr. J is offering huge wads of nuyen up front, yet clearly doesn't trust me to do the job, the only reasonable assumption is that Mr. J is trying to set me up and hoping all the shiny nuyen will distract me. Maybe it's a burn job, maybe it's a Lone Star sting, but taking the job sounds like a very bad idea.

I also wouldn't take a meet in a place of Mr. J's choosing; I'd want neutral ground.

The best Mr. J could hope for by this stunt is that the Runners just refuse the job. If they catch him trying for ritual samples, etc, they could just leave him and his limo as smoking wreckage.

How about this then?

Mr J wants the job done, but doesn't want to be involved. He does his homework, snooping around after the players before the meet. He finds their contacts, their flops, their everything.

He does the meet, whereever the players want the meet to be. He takes no samples or anything funny from them. However, while at the meet, he has operatives dust down their houses, collecting all the material he needs.

He knows that the players are not going to be there, so his operatives can work comfortably.
Then when the deal is done, and the players return to their houses, they find a nice little file of data that Mr.J has compiled. It includes their details, enough for them to know that crossing Mr J is not an option.

I mean, if Mr J is going to be giving out a wad of cash, he is going to expect two things...
the job to be done, and also, that the players are going to be tempted to walk away.
Getting dirt on the players should be a given.

All Mr. Johnson needs is a copy of their brag sheet (you do use these, don't you), and a photo taken at the meet. He knows that if they burn him, he can just pay another Shadowrun team to track them down. The replacement killers will have to talk to their contacts, and roll Etiquette (Street) TN 4 a few times using the following table (successes are cumulative):

what kind of expenses are you expecting when 100k is 12% of the toal payment?

That's way out of scope from any game I've played or ran, even with suicide missions.

Just something to bare in mind.

Someone i know who's a self employed Electrian. Told me once a few years ago that he's done enough work that he's getting calls from some really big companys wanting him to wire-up their buildings/Wharehouse's and stuff, but because he didn't have the money to afford all the things he would need for it (wiring) he had to decline the jobs till he got enough money put aside so he could take those jobs.

Exactly Shockwave, this is going to be a long run (as in months of real time and game time).
I wanted to do something really epic and different from the disjoined random runs (connected as they may be in the overall plot). I'll probably have another thread here explaining it when I get more details solidified.

That's different. It's a retaiener type situation for the runners to effectively "go bush" for a few months or similair. Sure I can see it, it's so far out of the range that the J is looking for talent but providing the toys.

In that sort of situation, i could definitely see a J stipulating that the runners wear trackers of some sort, linked to their bio-readings so they cann't just pull a switcharoo in a faraday cage with some bum off the street. Of course the trackers have an exposive charge or a heavy tranq injector...

Oh, in that case:
"Here is (cash value). Use it to prepare whatever you deem neccessary for (time estimate) so that you will not return to have everything you own lost to a missed payment or something. Also, you may use it for any additional resources you see as neccessary for this work. The cred is handled in the rarely used 'credit' format, if you do not show up at (departure time window) to begin the job, any transactions from this account will be cancelled, and while I will not personally hold any grudge, I cannot speak for everyone you payed with this money."

If the team doesn't have a decker, let a Johnson supply one. A very loyal and very skilled decker who works remotly from a facility controled by the Johnson and who will track their every movement.

We've never had that problem in my groups. The problem of people just running off with a down payment, that is.

We would be VERY hard pressed to do any work without some of it up front, usually half, sometimes more. If we ran off with it, I doubt it would be any problem for a Johnson to see to it we never found work as Shadowrunners again, which is why we don't do it.

Another reason is that this gives the Johnson a slight incentive not to screw us over - We have some of the money already, we are totally capable of running off with it if we think he's screwing with us.

The final reason is that the Johnson's half of the money can be viewed as a down payment on an assassin.

Being Self Employed you tend not to.

Having been self-employed on various occasions and being the recipient of a number of small business loans (in more than one country), I beg to differ.

Depends on the size, I got the impression he was talking about 10-20 thousand. But it matters not.

It's cool ... and like you said, doesn't really matter. I was just curious after you made the comment about no capital.

It's definately a balance and perception kinda issue.

Runners depend on their reputations. Taking the money and running, is a big no no and has serious fallout. Word on the street can quickly become that they're unreliable, thieves, etc etc. Suddenly their contacts all dry up, etc. So if I'm a runner and I get a big say 500k advance on my 1 mil nuyen job. A johnson isn't going to offer that unless they know that I know, what I'm worth. Or its a trap and a big old suicide mission.

Joe runner fresh off the street into the world of the SR biz isn't going to get a huge upfront advance. Compared with Uber Silent Death the assassin who's been in his business for years, and takes getting a 500k advance, as a matter of course.

A side note on the original situation tho, that J. sure is nice offering to cover potential expenses up front. As a runner, I'd be hella concerned there's more going on.

If the runners are good enough to do this job they should have a reputation good enough to virtually guarantee they won't run away - they *know* they'd never work in this town again, and the reward is not big enough to be worth that. The attempts to "ensure their loyalty" are likely to yield just one thing: problems. Why?

One thing Mr. J should bear in mind is that *any* noticed attempt at tracking the runners or, God forbid, acquiring ritual samples, will likely cause the runner to refuse the offer *and* become hostile towards the Johnson. The question is not "can a J. use some method to do XYZ?" but "will all the attempts at XYZ go unnoticed?" If a runner finds a bug in his car, spyware in the credstick, his house searched, and *fails* to notice the astral mage spying on him, he'll still *know* that the J. is breaking the rules of the game. And the word will spread.

I mean, a runner *depends* on being nobody, his life and his income require there's as little info on him as possible. *Anybody* having a file on him is a threat, both to his life and to his chances of ever finding a job again. He might have run against the J's corp in the past. He might run against it in the future. The corp can share its data with other corps or with the Lone Star. There's so many possibilities...

A Johnson using this tactic can start creating a database of runners, or even a collection of ritual samples - but the first time *any* runner notices this the J. in question either finds that no fixer talks to him and no runner works for him anymore or (if the runners are of the more paranoid/violent/direct kind) becomes a wormfood.

The very shadowrunning community exists because the corps turn a blind eye. The corps *could*, in theory, track down most runners (even if the efficiency of such effort is questionable). They could, in theory, simply stop using runners. But shadowrunning still exists. The whole system depends on things like contacts and reputation and efficiency. A Johnson trying to break these unwritten rules endangers both the runners and the whole system. *Everybody* in the biz, both the corps and the runners, know how the game is played: don't ask, don't tell. If a J. can't play by the rules, well... He'll soon find himself out of the game, that way or another.

easy, you say the run will take months? and the downpayment is for expenses? divide it and give it in parts one part/month... if at any point the johnson sees no results he can stop paying..

DS

And if the majority of expenses is buying some equipment, have a fixer trusted by both parties provide these goods. The runners get their ware from a fixer they trust, and the Johnson pays the money to a fixer he trusts. The runners can of course run away with the *goods* they get, but that's much less likely than them running away with cash.