This is a spinoff of "What's the pay range in your campaign?"

Since Mr Johnsons don't really care how many people they are paying, just the bottom line, what kind of jobs would a J pay 5k, 10K, 25k etc for?

FWIW, see src.100, they have a table of baseline pay for runs.

Personally, I find it reasonable if you look at the fees on that page as a "per team member, for a low-risk run of that type, and a group with a "regular" rep (as opposed to green, veteran or elite)"

IIRC those were supposed to be for the whole team, not per team member...

Those pay rates are pretty sad, when you consider upkeep rules for deckers and riggers.

I also prefer to have a campaign that bears a closer resemblance to The Score, Heat, Enemy Of The State, Spy Game, The Italian Job, etc. While some of those movies are weaker than others, they all involve professionals competing for high stakes and that type of scenario is a lot more appealing to my players and I than a "street-level" (and I use the term loosely) campaign where the runners are willing to commit multiple felonies in exchange for beer money.

Please note that despite sounding a bit condescending, I'm not trying to disparage anyone else's style of gameplay. If you prefer to have a game where 10,000 is a reasonable price for a group of skilled mercenaries to charge for a daring cocktail of industrial espionage and assassination, so be it. I hope you have a great time and keep playing Shadowrun for a long time.

Way deep down in my GM heart of hearts, I feel that runs should only pay slightly more than the upkeep cost required to keep essence, meat bod, and gear together on one plane of existance. Shadowrun becomes less fun when it's dominated by toy arms races. That being said, runners should find ways to stretch their buying nuyen to keep on the right side of the SOTA curve (i.e., negotiating with Johnsons for gear, building/buying their own, etc.)

Runners are not going to work for less money then they could make by stealing a Ford Americar once every a couple of weeks and having the group troll negotiate the sale to a chop shop.

Heheheeh.
That could be a profitable sideline, actually...

It's even better if you sell the driver to a chop shop too.

~J

So you really can put a price on human life. Personally, I'd like SR4 to include a table for those values . . .

Waste nothing, eh? You can also take the remaining scraps from the chop shop and sell it to an unscrupulous meat packing plant (soylent green brand meats, they're good for you!!!) or to some ghoul group.

You people give recycling a whole new meaning...

Ooh, I made it into a sig...

Recycling? Hell, we came pretty close to recycling a Johnson once (Who says getting double-crossed has to lose you money?), but I was able to talk some sense into him and everyone walked away happy. Relatively speaking.

Does anyone else find the term "Recycled Johnson" to be so egregariously wrong?

Hehehe, bring along a giant with a sack to carry the bodies. Brings a whole new meaning to looting bodies.

Sadly I seem to have lost the logs from that day, the GM's reaction was priceless.

~J

The guidelines in SRComp are baseline. It is also stated that the pay rate is low end, so it means that you can be paid more but not less.

As a newbie GM, I'm starting the pay low (and thus risk -- and complexity), but I've already started allowing the players to get extra pay for extra objectives (see pay thread for examples of getting paid more than once), and also the runs may have collateral or contingent terms.

Something like: This computer needs to be destroyed. I'll pay 40k. Those dozen or so computers over there can be destroyed, and you'll get an extra 1k per computer (paid upon proof of completion, of course), but if you kill any guards, I'll cut 2k off the total for each guard killed. 1k will be cut if they are seriously wounded (i.e. need "Intensive Care lifestyle").

Or: Kill this gentlemen before he completes his project, you get 20k. Kill him after and you get 10k. He should be done in a week. 30k if you wipe the project data (will be alot harder to get all copies after project is done).

That way, if they work hard and get lucky, they can get alot more money than if they just brute force their way around and keep from being killed.

I want the whole log of that day's gaming...

Talk about sig worthy material