Shadowrun Topic(Talk & Questions)

[Delta]

Okay that sounds like low level. If your GM continues with very small payouts, you should seriously consider playing a magical character. I've had GMs who thought giving PCs any kind of money was a really bad thing in the path, and playing a decker/hacker or other character based heavily on cyber- or bioware isn't a lot of fun if you can't afford anything.

[Necroticplague]

True, but I've found that the Johnson's low payouts can usually be subsidized by stealing and selling everything you can. You can start with the guns or sticks off every gaurd you can take out. And any cameras set up as security. And any cyber you can rip off of corpses.

[The Random NPC]

Responses are appreciated, although it seems we're starting "from the ground up", so to speak, as we started with a scenario that basically involved retrieving a kidnapped girl from some local mobsters, for a whopping 500 Nuyen per Runner payout

You might want to ask your GM how much he thinks your character is worth. I've crunched some numbers in the past, and I came up with about 3000 Nuyen per night for stealing cars (details in spoiler). Granted at that point you would be responsible for 1.5% of all auto thefts in the city of Seattle, but that option would still be open.

Spoiler

Show

If I can find it, or redo the math I'll post it, but I found the average price of all cars and trucks, while ignoring the outliers like that 80,000 Nuyen one. Then I took a 6 connection fixer and figured out an average number of hits, and figured out a profit for selling in 1-7 days. Then I averaged those profits together to get the average profit per night per car. To get the crime stat, I took the percentage of auto thefts in Seattle in 2010 and assumed they wouldn't change, and applied them to the 2072 stats I found on a wiki. In all likelihood, the crime would go up, but not necessarily be reported. Can't really tell though, all those societal changes'll probably mess up any general trends and it's far enough into the "future" that you can't predict them.
EDIT: I did the math again, found the average of all the cars and trucks (about 49000), discarded all prices outside of 1 standard deviation, and got an average of just under 9000 nuyen after selling it for 30% and your fixer takes a cut of 30%. After some consideration, I assumed your fixer would be an elf with max negotiation and a specialization in fencing. If he grabs Trustworthy, tailored pheromones, rating 6 emotion software, and maxes out charisma, he can get 26 dice for that test. that means he can buy 6 hits and will need 12 hours to sell your car. I also assume he has other things to do and can only make 1 check per day, so it takes 2 days. 9000 nuyen over 2 days ends up with 4500 nuyen per day, and the average for selling it in 1 or 2 days comes out to about 6700 nuyen. I redid the crime stat too, using data for 2011 auto thefts. I ended up with 136,000 cars stolen per year in Shadowrun, and since you're just stealing 1 car a day, you'd be responsible for under 0.3% (0.268%) of all auto thefts.

[Delta]

In my experience, GMs who think that 500 bucks is adequate payment for jobs are really big on "Oh, yeah that stuff's broke you won't get any money for it" or "Oh no you can't sell that because of [reasons]!"

That's not to hate on low power campaigns which can be a lot of fun, but a lot of GMs think that just withholding money is enough to make a campaign low powered, which just takes a lot of power away from mundane characters while hardly affecting the magical ones.

[The Random NPC]

In my experience, GMs who think that 500 bucks is adequate payment for jobs are really big on "Oh, yeah that stuff's broke you won't get any money for it" or "Oh no you can't sell that because of [reasons]!"

That's not to hate on low power campaigns which can be a lot of fun, but a lot of GMs think that just withholding money is enough to make a campaign low powered, which just takes a lot of power away from mundane characters while hardly affecting the magical ones.

If this is directed at me, I completely agree. I have noticed this in the past as well, but the excuses I heard were more along the lines of "there isn't anything to steal". Mostly I'm just posting because it gives me an excuse to do Math to things.

[DigoDragon]

I've started campaigns with an opening payment of 500 nuyen. The Johnson usually says something along the lines of the mission being a test of their abilities before he offers them real jobs (The PCs of course, being unproven newbies to the shadows).

Usually it's a fetch quest or a quick B&E for something shady and the Johnson plants a few agents to watch the team. If the players are professional and don't ask too many questions, then we move on to real business. Once the PCs have a few successes and get their names out, the work comes to them.


As for stealing stuff to padd out their earnings, I always allow it, but I make them work with their contacts to fence the goods (plus, high ticket items like boosting that fancy car means you gotta take out any RFID tracker before the police are alerted that it's hot).

[comicshorse]

True, but I've found that the Johnson's low payouts can usually be subsidized by stealing and selling everything you can. You can start with the guns or sticks off every gaurd you can take out. And any cameras set up as security. And any cyber you can rip off of corpses.

Or the corpses themselves if you have contacts among the ghouls

[Driderman]

I'm thinking the low-payout mission was more meant as a cheap introduction. He did also set us up with a pretty expensive, only slightly used and bloodstained cyberdeck which I'm guessing is the hook for the next story

As for playing magic-user, I would except I kinda took on the Face role and in a group of currently 3 players, we already have a shaman and a physical adept. Adding another magic-user seems off, and I'd probably just overshadow the current shaman if I did.
I think I'll max out on resources and spend my 450000 nuyen on charisma, logic and reaction-enhancing biotech, making me a situational charisma bomb and secondary infiltrator and possibly hands-on hacker (as opposed to a Matrix-decker).

Maybe it's just that I'm from a rather different school of roleplaying, and focus a lot more on establishing quirks and character flaws to play off, rather than designing a specialized, high-powered mercenary. I get the feeling that maybe I'm making a dramatic character, for a puzzle game...

[TheOOB]

I've started campaigns with an opening payment of 500 nuyen. The Johnson usually says something along the lines of the mission being a test of their abilities before he offers them real jobs (The PCs of course, being unproven newbies to the shadows).

Usually it's a fetch quest or a quick B&E for something shady and the Johnson plants a few agents to watch the team. If the players are professional and don't ask too many questions, then we move on to real business. Once the PCs have a few successes and get their names out, the work comes to them.


As for stealing stuff to padd out their earnings, I always allow it, but I make them work with their contacts to fence the goods (plus, high ticket items like boosting that fancy car means you gotta take out any RFID tracker before the police are alerted that it's hot).

Any shadowrunner I've ever played would walk if they were offered 500 for a run. Remember that Shadowrunners are not street punks or gang members. They are professional criminals who are willing to put their life on the line for a stranger who will deny their existence should something goes wrong. You have to pay for that.

My general rule is, unless I'm hooding(and even then) I won't get out of bed for less than 5k, and if the run is expected to be risky or dangerous, 10k min, and that's per runner. You need a shadowrunner to walk a package across the street, better cough up the money. If it's not worth that much money to you, it's not a job that needs a runner(there are hundreds of other crims who will do it for less, just not with the professionalism and deniability of a runner).

Part of this is for the setting, if a runner takes crap wages, it puts out the reputation that they are cheap and not worth good money. The other big part is game balance. Some characters(namely awakened and technomancers) get more powerful by karma, while some characters(hackers, riggers, and samurai) get better with nuyen. If you give out karma without giving out enough nuyen, you are making awakened characters overpowered compared to the rest of the team(the opposite is also true, but not as common). A karma is worth about 2.5k nuyen, so over the long run, you should try to balance things to between 2 and 3k nuyen per karma earned.

[The Random NPC]

I can understand taking a pay cut to get your foot in the door or for the Johnson to test you. But I also agree that 500 nuyen is too little. I'm personally comfortable with 3000 nuyen per runner, I'd be ok with taking 2500 nuyen. Maybe even 2000 nuyen if the long term payout was good enough.

[DigoDragon]

Any shadowrunner I've ever played would walk if they were offered 500 for a run. Remember that Shadowrunners are not street punks or gang members. They are professional criminals who are willing to put their life on the line for a stranger who will deny their existence should something goes wrong.

For professionals yes I totally agree, but like I said, my players were "unproven newbies to the shadows". In essense, yes, they ARE street punks and gangers. Many are unemployed blue/white collar newbs that never done anything worse than get a parking ticket.

See, my style of starting out a Shadowrun game is for the players to be low level average people with no experience in Running. They get picked up by a Johnson and he molds them into a professional team. The pay may be crud for that first mission, but he's also paying them in experience and advice that'll keep them from ending up dead in a gutter before the end of the week.

And the pay does gets serious once the team does.

[Driderman]

For professionals yes I totally agree, but like I said, my players were "unproven newbies to the shadows". In essense, yes, they ARE street punks and gangers. Many are unemployed blue/white collar newbs that never done anything worse than get a parking ticket.

See, my style of starting out a Shadowrun game is for the players to be low level average people with no experience in Running. They get picked up by a Johnson and he molds them into a professional team. The pay may be crud for that first mission, but he's also paying them in experience and advice that'll keep them from ending up dead in a gutter before the end of the week.

And the pay does gets serious once the team does.

Sounds a lot like our approach. I think my character is the most "professional" of our bunch and that's mostly because she has a history as a Corp asset. Due to circumstances she had to go underground and now she's looking to get into shadowrunning both for ideological and economical reasons. The other characters are an Orc "gumshoe" who's better at thugging than investigation (and who really shouldn't be a physical adept but he's not particularly system-canny and the GM suggested it) and a newly-gifted (Awakened?) Bear Shaman and former cell mate of the aforementioned Orc. So yeah, pretty much punks and gangers

[TheOOB]

I can understand taking a pay cut to get your foot in the door or for the Johnson to test you. But I also agree that 500 nuyen is too little. I'm personally comfortable with 3000 nuyen per runner, I'd be ok with taking 2500 nuyen. Maybe even 2000 nuyen if the long term payout was good enough.

That can work, at least it's enough to pay for a month of low lifestyle, which they might need to keep the heat off.

[TheOOB]

For professionals yes I totally agree, but like I said, my players were "unproven newbies to the shadows". In essense, yes, they ARE street punks and gangers. Many are unemployed blue/white collar newbs that never done anything worse than get a parking ticket.

See, my style of starting out a Shadowrun game is for the players to be low level average people with no experience in Running. They get picked up by a Johnson and he molds them into a professional team. The pay may be crud for that first mission, but he's also paying them in experience and advice that'll keep them from ending up dead in a gutter before the end of the week.

And the pay does gets serious once the team does.

If you're characters are 400BP characters, they are not street punks, they are well above street punks. A magician with magic 5 or 6 is rare and powerful(most wage mages have about 3 or 4 magic) capable of killing with a thought, your hacker or samurai likely has 50k+ in gear/'ware alone, it doesn't make sense that they would risk their life for a stranger for an amount that won't even pay a months rent if they do a run every week(low lifestyle is 2k a month and 500 a week before expenses does not pay for that.)

And as I said before, I hope everyone in your campaign plays an awakened character, because everyone else is going to be worthless next to their godlike team members.

[DigoDragon]

If you're characters are 400BP characters, they are not street punks, they are well above street punks.

Obviously. I've only run one adventure at that starting level and it was akin to something from Ocean's Eleven. Johnson hires the 'second best' in the shadows to rob several million nuyen from a Casino and the PCs were getting 5-figures for their cut. Had a fun car chase at the end involving a public bus.

The first best were hired to defend the casino.
(and of course the Johnson doesn't even mention this, mwahaha)

And as I said before, I hope everyone in your campaign plays an awakened character, because everyone else is going to be worthless next to their godlike team members.

Like I said before, it's less of a run and more of a test. Once passed then the team gets real missions with real pay, along with training, advice, and a chance to network.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Obviously. I've only run one adventure at that starting level and it was akin to something from Ocean's Eleven. Johnson hires the 'second best' in the shadows to rob several million nuyen from a Casino and the PCs were getting 5-figures for their cut. Had a fun car chase at the end involving a public bus.

The first best were hired to defend the casino.
(and of course the Johnson doesn't even mention this, mwahaha)




Like I said before, it's less of a run and more of a test. Once passed then the team gets real missions with real pay, along with training, advice, and a chance to network.

No runner worth his sidearm would so much as run on a Stuffer Shack for a stick of Sorghum for 500. The test would be whether or not they took the job.

[Delta]

The first best were hired to defend the casino.
(and of course the Johnson doesn't even mention this, mwahaha)

Oh don't get me started on that one.

So many GMs seem to love this and it's often so ridiculously stupid, Johnsons holding back vital information about the target's security for no other reason but the GM thinking it's a genius move. The J is paying the runners a ton of money to do a job for him, shouldn't it be in his best interest to tell them what he can to ensure their success?

[Necroticplague]

Oh don't get me started on that one.

So many GMs seem to love this and it's often so ridiculously stupid, Johnsons holding back vital information about the target's security for no other reason but the GM thinking it's a genius move. The J is paying the runners a ton of money to do a job for him, shouldn't it be in his best interest to tell them what he can to ensure their success?

You want the runners to do a job, but the Johnson doesn't want them to live through it. Living Runners are loose ends in many circumstances, so logically the johnson would want to carefully control information given so that you succeed, but don't survive.Plus, dead runners get much less pay.If they wanted someone who wasn't disposable, they'd use Corp assets.

That's why I only trust ridiculously paranoid anonymous johnsons. If they let you know too much about them personally, that's practically a giant flag saying "BACKSTABBER".

[DigoDragon]

No runner worth his sidearm would so much as run on a Stuffer Shack for a stick of Sorghum for 500. The test would be whether or not they took the job.

And how professional they are about it. Last time I was on a team, one player kept video taping the missions for his online blog and two others had a habit of leaving cold bodies. That team didn't last long thereafter (in the literal sense. We screwed up one Johnson's mission so he called Lonestar on us. 2/3rds of the team was killed).

Oh don't get me started on that one.

So many GMs seem to love this and it's often so ridiculously stupid, Johnsons holding back vital information about the target's security for no other reason but the GM thinking it's a genius move. The J is paying the runners a ton of money to do a job for him, shouldn't it be in his best interest to tell them what he can to ensure their success?

Normally I agree and that would be how I run a Johnson (very rarely do I run a mission where the J backstabs the team), but in this particular case, the Johnson that hired the PCs to hit the caisno also hired the other runner team to defend it. He played the two teams against each other for his own personal gain (Johnson had a major insurance scam planned out). So indeed this was a rare backstabing mission.

I did purposely set up the adventure to allow the PCs two chances of learning of the betrayal and catching their Johnson to inflict whatever revenge they found fitting (They caught him on the second chance and killed his reputation by sending evidence of his scam to the casino's board of directors, plus shot him in the knee for good measure).

[NotAnAardvark]

What versions do you guys tend to run? I've been looking to DM a campaign and have had some trouble picking one after hearing so many varied things about... pretty much all of them. OP says 5 is terrible (and doesn't say why) but I've heard other people complaining about all the problems 4 had that supposedly get addressed in 5. And purists saying it's 3rd or bust. And people saying 3 isn't flexible enough and that I have to be playing 4.

So I'm at a loss (and not an aardvark).

[Driderman]

What versions do you guys tend to run? I've been looking to DM a campaign and have had some trouble picking one after hearing so many varied things about... pretty much all of them. OP says 5 is terrible (and doesn't say why) but I've heard other people complaining about all the problems 4 had that supposedly get addressed in 5. And purists saying it's 3rd or bust. And people saying 3 isn't flexible enough and that I have to be playing 4.

So I'm at a loss (and not an aardvark).

I've only ever played 1 session and that was 5th edition, a couple of weekes ago, but I did own 4th edition as well and have both read it and made several characters for it. They seemed very similiar, except for the "Priority System" (you have priorities A, B, C, D & E to assign to 5 different main areas of character creation meaning you'll have to forego some things to focus on others. I like it, I think). Of course, I haven't touched on decking and magic use at all, which I'm told have both been made better for 5th edition.
In any case, my very limited experience with 5th edition gave me the impression that it was a lot like older editions and it generally seemed like a decent enough system, so I'd suggest going for that since that's presumably the one that's "supported" by the developers now.

[Dimers]

I've played 2nd and 4th editions and seen 3rd. 3rd is fine, no complaints, but 4th seems like a better game mechanically without sacrificing any flavor. 2nd was messier than a Panzer shot hitting a ghoul.

What I've heard about 5th makes it sound like that twists the mechanics out of shape to fit the metagame, which would be okay if it weren't contradicting the fluff and expectations and mechanics of previous editions. It doesn't attract me. I don't know -- it's just the impression I've gotten.

There's a complete rewrite for the 4e hacking and computer rules, freely available online, and that helps a lot with one of 4e's less excellent areas. It's homebrew from top to bottom and takes a loooooong time to read, though, so not all gamemasters will use it.

[Rhynn]

(you have priorities A, B, C, D & E to assign to 5 different main areas of character creation meaning you'll have to forego some things to focus on others. I like it, I think)

I find it much easier to create competent (or competent-feeling) PCs with the 5E priority system (in part because it just gives you more numbers to play with, total) than the 4E system.

I haven't touched on decking and magic use at all, which I'm told have both been made better for 5th edition.

That's definitely debatable. I much prefer the 4E decking system, which is, for one thing, more plausible-feeling. (Not plausible, necessarily, just more plausible...)

In any case, my very limited experience with 5th edition gave me the impression that it was a lot like older editions and it generally seemed like a decent enough system, so I'd suggest going for that since that's presumably the one that's "supported" by the developers now.

It's going to take years for there to be as much material for 5E as 4E already has. I've never understood what "support" matters - I get just as much out of playing a 25-year-old RPG that's not had anything published for it in 15 years as I do out of one that's still having stuff written for it. It's not like you can actually run out of material, especially when it's easy to create it yourself...

I'd say the only way to decide which edition to go for is to get a feel for them and decide what you prefer. Without the ability to do that, though I'd recommend 4E for now. It's much easier, IMO, to include the good parts of 5E in 4E than to fix 5E.

Speaking of which, did they put out the errata for the enormous glaring mistakes in 5E yet, and when are they releasing a re-edited version with all the incorrect page references, etc., fixed?

[Delta]

You want the runners to do a job, but the Johnson doesn't want them to live through it. Living Runners are loose ends in many circumstances, so logically the johnson would want to carefully control information given so that you succeed, but don't survive.Plus, dead runners get much less pay.If they wanted someone who wasn't disposable, they'd use Corp assets.

But in most circumstances, that's not really possible. If the job's about extracting or stealing something/someone, the team HAS to survive to be able to deliver the payload.

And if no team comes back after working for that particular Johnson, sooner or later no one of any reputation and experience will be willing to work for him, guys who routinely backstab and kill the runners they hire will soon run out of runners to hire.

[comicshorse]

But in most circumstances, that's not really possible. If the job's about extracting or stealing something/someone, the team HAS to survive to be able to deliver the payload.

And if no team comes back after working for that particular Johnson, sooner or later no one of any reputation and experience will be willing to work for him, guys who routinely backstab and kill the runners they hire will soon run out of runners to hire.

Exactly, and that's if some of the Runners they backstabbed don't get the Johnson first. The problems with getting on the wrong side of professional Shadowrunners speak for themselves

[Delta]

It really depends on what needs to be done and who you want for the job. If all the J needs are some gutter punks, sure he'll get that and can get rid of them afterwards without any problem. But if you need highly trained professionals with rare skills and expensive equipment (like deckers and mages), then we're way out of "just kill them off to tie up loose ends" afterwards.

Of course there are always exceptions, sometimes the information is THAT sensitive, but as a general rule "kill the hirelings" isn't a good business plan if you depend on having hirelings do a lot of your dirty work.

[DigoDragon]

What versions do you guys tend to run?

I run 4th. I've played in older editions, but 4th was the easiest for my players to get into since most of them were veterans of GURPS.

[Necroticplague]

Exactly, and that's if some of the Runners they backstabbed don't get the Johnson first. The problems with getting on the wrong side of professional Shadowrunners speak for themselves

Yes, we do have a fun time striking back at the Johnson that tried to have us offed. One of the perks of cyberzombism: shrugging off rigged traps with little difficulty. "This is the ear of the man you sent after me. And here's the rest of his head for good measure.He was probably cheaper than my half after pay, right? Did you consider he was a lot cheaper for a reason?"

[LibraryOgre]

I have played every edition except 5th, all while they were the current edition. Personally, I liked 4th the best, though it had its problems; 1st and 2nd had the best fluff material.

[comicshorse]

What versions do you guys tend to run? I've been looking to DM a campaign and have had some trouble picking one after hearing so many varied things about... pretty much all of them. OP says 5 is terrible (and doesn't say why) but I've heard other people complaining about all the problems 4 had that supposedly get addressed in 5. And purists saying it's 3rd or bust. And people saying 3 isn't flexible enough and that I have to be playing 4.

So I'm at a loss (and not an aardvark).

I've played 1st through 4th.
First was a awful mess and should be ignored
Second was miles better.
Third was basically second but with some of the problems smoothed over and is my choice to play
Fourth I hate but I'm deeply prejudiced against 'Points Buy' systems so YMMV