Looking for some ideas for self funded runs.

It is the end of February 2061, in 2-4 months a blood mage of no small skill and no great sanity is going to come after me and mine and I will be broke unless I do something about it myself. The arcology run didn’t pay as well as I had hoped.

When this mage arrives I want to be able to throw around money to help take him down, no run that comes to me is likely to pay enough so I am looking at setting something up myself. For complicated reasons I can’t attack novatech (at least not of my own back, yet, they may be useful against the blood mage as they are threatened as well)

I am a skilled wuyen and my team includes a skilled decker, stealth op and combat adept.

How can I get the kind of money I need in the time I have, or failing that what makes good self funded runs that although profitable wont make as much as I would like.

Edward

Screw the funds, start making friends, as many as you can. Preferably with mages and people who own T-birds.

Well, try capturing some smaller more managable blood mages or toxic shamans and turn them into the Draco foundation for a reward.

There are plenty of places to find money from Big D's will.

I cannot see the Arcology runs paying off well at all. Aren't most of those charity?

You could not pay me enough to try and find a needle in a haystack like an exec's daughter.

If you can collect some of those drones in there you could make a pretty penny I think.


You might get some interesting runs trying to find out more information about the comet programs each of the corps are developing. That information would be very useful to other corps vying to reach the comet.

This arcology run was one the GM wrote. If the primary objective had been successful it would have payed a cool million. Unfortunately dues managed to redesign himself sufficiently that it was no longer possible (OOC I saw that coming) if nova tech (our employer) had managed to use that to take control of the arcology we where set to earn somewhere around a billion nuyen each (in cred, bonds, stock and goods), of cause that was never actually going to happen.

Edward

If you're a wujen, why not see if you can't drudge up an orichalcum deposit? Worst case scenario, you find one that's already been found, and you have to raid the place.

You could try your hand at smuggling. Buy goods or steal them, take em somewhere else, and sell the stuff. BTLs, guns, or whatever.

There are often possibilities to steal valuables. Although with more high profile goods you have to arrange a buyer beforehand.

I had my players raid a car transport once in a conflict between two car dealers.
They had to stop two trucks, with in total 8 eurocar westwinds on them, from reaching their destination. Which they did quite well since there wasn't much left of the cars or the trucks they were on.

Ofcourse they could have captured the whole lot, sell it for big bucks and not make the evening news....

But where is the fun in that?

Auto theft seems the quickest, lowest risk way of making big nuyen. Think about hitting a Ford dealership.

It's a low power campaign, they started out with no magic, no cyberware etc. The group consisted of a sociopath driver (and wannabe face), a distinctively styled gunbunny on acid, and a rather nondescript car-thief.

As stated the mission was to stop the trucks from reaching their desitnation:

Their original plan was to throw caltrops of a bridge into the highway in front of the trucks. So the trucks would crash, causing a major traffic jam. After the crash the trucks would be easy targets for mollies (molotov cocktails). Through legwork and contacts they got the route the truck were most likely to take, as well as the time of departure and the estimated time of arrival.

They set up camp on a bridge over the highway and waited in a freshly stolen car...and they waited...and waited...

After a while the gunbunny took off on his bike, wearing is shiny silver outfit, and drove down the highway towards the trucks. After a while he discovers that the trucks are held up in a natural traffic jam and figures he doesn't need the caltrops now. So he stops his bike in the middle of the highway, next to the railing, and being the triggerhappy acid addict he is he starts tossing mollies at the trucks. The first one catches fire and soon afterwards the fueltanks explode.

The driver of the second truck doesnt stick around for all this and breaks outof traffic and takes of fast. (having taken only minor damage from the mollies)

Soon after it reaches the bridge, where the rest of the time lies in wait. They throw the caltrops and due to the much higher speed of the truck it crashes badly, clearing the concrete of several civilian cars.

Meanwhile the gunbunnies actions have caught the attention of all kinds of people being stuck in a traffic jam, getting an eye full of a silver clad terrorist who's throwing beer bottles at a truck, making them go boom. Needless to say the star is called and they are on their way. Did I mention the newsnet helicopter, getting some crystal clear pictures?

Upon hearing the sirens he decides its a good idea to take off and hits the gas. He tries to get off the highway to find lonestar in the middle of setting up a roadblock.
With some nifty James Bond like actions and with massive amounts of karmaburning he clears it and eventually shakes off the cops and the helicopter in a highspeed chase.

With all the attention focussed on the crazy terrorist the others managed to get away relatively easy. During the next run they managed to clear up the aftermath, and get the heat of their backs.

Total value of the 8 westwinds and the trucks: 900k.

It got them a few K's of had they managed to steal the trucks and their content in a lowprofile manner, they could problably have gotten about 200k more, if they'd manage to find a buyer.

Set up shop conjuring for other runners, have them pay the nuyen and karma to transfer the spirits.

Make wards for money.

Provide astral security for other Johnsons' meets. After learning the runs the other teams will be on, ambush them for the paydata/loot and complete the contract for yourself. Sell their gear back to them.

You say there's a skilled decker in the party....surely one can 'accidently find' some sort of monetary things going on in the matrix, and 'mysteriously' transfer some funds to some place....

Well, sure. It is not a long term survival plan, but you may get a good amount of money quickly. I never said it was a good idea...

The problem with just having the Decker do pay data runs is that anything that comes of it is his money, (I could probably get a small cut for watching his meet with a heal spell but he really doesn’t need that kind of protection). Now the Decker is also threatened buy the blood mage in question so this would work to help the teem but anything I do with his money I need to justify to him, and some things I don’t want to.

I did consider using my enchanting skill to make some quick cash but if I go to the enchanting lab I will be making expendable spell foci for my own consumption. Partly because that is more useful and partly because the GM hates when magicians get uber day jobs although in this instance he would forgive a short term indulgence.

I’m not shore what you mean buy conjuring for other runners I don’t summon elementals, spirits of the elements are short term like nature spirits you cant transfer ownership like you can with an elemental

One idea I had was to send the decker to fleece a trucking companies scheduling database and see what turns up worth intercepting, guns, expensive foods, cyber wear. The problem is if we get a truck containing 50 crates of 10 cheep assault rifles that’s about 50000 nuyen profit (plus what we get for the truck) that kind of profit should not be hard to get (cyber wear, vehicle parts fashion clothing all net simerly if hot higher profits) but some how I don’t think the GM will make it that easy and I cant think of any logical traps witch means we get nasty ones. Obviously you need to line up a buyer fro that kind of quantity in advance but it can be done.

Edward

I think you should take some blood mages, and toxic shamans to the draco foundation, and earn a little cash that way, than you should assemble yourself a strike force and meet this blood mage head on. OUr group had this same problem, we had a BADASS blood mage and his little regen adept freind, and we went took them head on with a strike force, only one of our boys went to the hospital.

It's just finding them that's the problem. Surely you won't be the only one's looking for that bounty, and toxics and blood mages aren't exactly standing out in the open saying "capture me!".

But it would be a great money-making venture and would give you some good experience fighting those types of magic for when the big blood mage comes knocking.

Another way to raise funds might be hunting for paranimals. Although i dont have any clue what (illegal) bounties on those are. It seems like something worth checking out.

Also organising events like streetraces, streetfights etc and controlling the gambling. Should net you quite a bit of cash.

If you're running in Seattle, try going after the toxic shaman Burning Bones on Glow City. Doesn't get much more toxic than that.

As for other self - motivated runs.... I'm going after the Mauvis Manual! You could to! hehehe.

Also, check your contacts, see if anyone you know know of some art collector types. With an experienced shadowrunner team cpapable (more or less ) of taking on blood mages, a simple art heist should be no problem. Just make sure you havea good fence waiting.

Also, you could always try allying your self with a syndicate. Triads, for example , woulnd't be a bad choice for a Wujen. Just remember that the're not going to let you ust walk away afterwards.

The question is, does the character know the Blood mage is coming for him or is it just the player.

If the character doesn't know, then having the character prepare for it would be metagaming. If the character does know then there are many ways he could prepare that don't require much money. Setting up multiple squatter level safehouses, for example.

The real problem with the get rich quick schemes is that they take time. You can't just go out and get full value for stolen goods. You would be lucky to get 1/10 the value from a fence or a chop shop in the case of cars.

Have you ever considered just knocking over an armored car carrying UCAS paper cash?

How to kill two birds with one stone:

- have your decker start digging up dirt on any powerful (and rich) people he can find.
- start blackmailing them
- make it look professional enough that they can't quite figure out who you are initially, but sloppy enough that they'll play along for a while.
- come up with a safe way to tranfer the funds. for example, have them arrive at a certain place as though you are doing a dead drop and then pick up the cash with a small UAV cargo drone.
- milk them for all the cash you can get
- when your blood mage hits town contact all your blackmailies and posing as a LS investigator tell them that you've busted open a black mailing ring lead by the blood mage (but don't tell them he's a blood mage).
[edit: you could also play it as a dirty cop and sell them this info...]
- watch the fun ensue. they may not take him out, but they'll slow him down and give you time to spend the money/disappear.

I like Method's idea. I have some more though.

You could hit a criminal controlled gambling den and steal the passcodes to their accounts. After all that money gets laundered, wether you do it yourself or you have someone else do it, you ought to be up a few million.

You also could steal some rich guys bank codes and such, the payoff won't be as good but it would probably be safer.

How traceable is a spirit, say for example a great form city spirit materialises in a jewellery store stacks trays of diamond rings on top of one another and runs out of the store, drops the lute down a sewer grating dematerialises drops into the sewer, picks up the jewels (he spread a cloth under the sewer grating before the hist so he could bundle it up quickly) the spirit then runs threw the maze of the sewers evades capture hands off the goods to the summoning mage and returns to where he came from, service complete.

Assuming the spirit was not controlled and interrogated is there any link back to the summoner that would allow repercussions to fall upon you.

Edward

Will it leave the summoners astral signature behind it for later investigators to assence.

Only if it uses powers

Your safe so long as nobody assesses the spirit during the act. (concealment self threw entire run, nobody’s going to make the assessing test with + force to TN).

Edward

concealment doesn't work on the astral. Just make sure they aren't peaking.

Could always spread FAB III around the area. Make them think twice about assensing. Plus, even at Force 10, it likely won't bother the spirit much, sincce dismissing it back to it's plane gets rid of the FAB, but the assensing mage has to get the FAB off some other way. And as it's available in an aerosol , should be easy enough to get into any buildings vents.

Fab 3 is not something I like to threw around, aside from the environmental implications (a cloud of fab I release now may be one I meet at random next week) it would make a huge dent in my potential profit.

If I go this rout ill just make shore there is nobody around to do the assessing and get the job done fast. So long as my astral signature wont be present once the spirit leaves (not he was not summoned there) I should be able to make it work

Edward

Gods - I'm just thankful that no one's thrown in the old "Buy survival knife, sell slap patch, profit" suggestion.

Ok, you have a decker on tap?

Take over an automated manufacturing plant - if it's got some decent facilities you can shunt some decent spare parts/modifications/etc into a couple of bins and have it delivered to your door.

My personal favourite:

Drugs! Hell, a character with Chemistry 6 is a very valuable addition. Or if someone's got a skillsoft jukebox, splash out on a couple of related skills, a pile of raw ingredients (GM to determine availability...might need a tanker or two...) and have the lucky bugger crank out Kamakazi, Hyper, etc like it was going out of fashion.

Sure, you'll piss off certain criminal elements...so do them a deal - sell the finished HIGH QUALITY product to the various Dons, Hardboys, etc and walk away whistling. (Of course, being the non-idiot type, you'd make sure that possible double-crossing urges would be considered and dealt with intelligently.)

This may also net you some rather twitchy but oh-so-useful Blood-mage fodder in the form of a go-gang or two who wouldn't mind a couple of kg's of various chemical compounds.

Not to mention the fun when you hit a mage with a home-brewed DMSO/Hyper/Pepper spray mix. If your delivery system is good enough, you'd be absolutely shocked at just how nasty that handy "crop-spraying" drone can be.
(ie: upwind and Half a klick away, you smile and wave at the god-awful mess you've created.)


Smuggling! -
A T-bird and some sugar. Nuff said. Hello Northern Baltic states of America.


Pirating!
-Ahrrrrr! Ye be findin' out when the next shipment of Fairlight Excalibers/new SOTA deck/etc is going to be moved and intercept some of it, me hearty!
It's a tried and true method of raising a fast buck, and IF you manage to find the holy grail of "Fairlight Express", your decker will thank you from the bottom of their black, withered heart.

-Tir=gone

Oh, yeah. Avoid FAB3 - it's a biological weapon and most G'vmt types will treat it as such. Hell, the only way I'd consider its use would be in some neutral-count area of land where a nice big bug hive has started to munch the populace.

Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned DIY datasteal and fence?

There's a powerful blood mage after you?
Sell that information to the highest bidder. I'm sure this blood mage, being powerful, has some keen artifacts on him, in addition to whatever reward the Draco foundation will give your new-found friends.

This will probably make things really complicated-but you'll have experienced blood mage hunters on 'your side', and some money to arm up.

I think the rules are in LitS but iirc you can make a lot of money doing wards. I think around 50k a month (maybe less??) You might want to try that out.

Once you do disable him, inflict a deadly wound, then apply a trauma patch. With mage supervision, begin a treatment of intense patching such that his magic rating is reduced to at or below 2. Once there, sell him again.

Just cyber him up with 7 Rating 1 headware radios that he can't turn off. Tune them to pollitical commentary stations, conspiracy theory, irritating music, etcetera. Not only have you installed 5.25 Essense worth of cyberware (thus rendering him unable to cast,) you've only spent 14,000 to do it.

Striping a mages magic buy surgery and drugs was mentioned in one of the books I believe it caused all sorts of psychological issues for the patient, however in this case I don’t think anybody will notice.

Edward

Or care, for that matter...

and there's always the good ol ' reliable area cranial bomb

Cheaper just to install 7 rating 1 headware radios...

In the likely event that the blood mage is an initiate (as is needed to know the sacrificing metamagic), 5.25 essense worth of cyber will at most drop him to a magic rating of 1. It's if your magic rating reaches 0 that you are fully burnt out, not if your essense is less than 1. Also, don't forget that he could try to geas the magic losses, which is why it works best with a mage supervising to make drekking sure that he doesn't still have a magic rating of 6.

As a suggested build for the observer:
Adept with cerebral booster, astral perception, and lots of enhanced perception. IIRC, that can get 13 dice as a starter for all perception tests, including astral. Toss in aura reading if desired.

Then install 8 headware radios.

How can he geas the magic loss? He'll have an ESSENSE score of less than 1, which precludes magic, dosen't it? Or are you telling me he can do something funky that prevents magic loss, while still getting cybered, which seems wrong.

Essense 6 + 1 initiation = MR of 7. 7-6 from implants =1, still not a burnout. 1+ intelligence (geasa) max = maximum geased magic rating, cannot be higher than before the essense loss.

A am certain that it said that if your essence drops below one you have no magic, period. You could be even the scribe with an initiate grade of 532. if your essence is less than one you’re a burn out .

Edward

In MITS, when it discusses Astral Projection, it mentions that if you have less than 1 essence, you can project (essence*60) minutes. It's on page 31.

Since you can still project astrally, you are not burned out. You just have to start out with magic greater than 6 -- so have initiated.

If you aren't using MITS, then you'd be correct -- but only because there's no way to have magic greater than essence in the BBB.

Edit: Oh. And on the previous page, it mentions that if your essence reaches 0 or less, you're burned out.. but at that point, you're either dead or a cyberzombie.

My bad