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Message no. 1
From: Dennis Steinmeijer dv8@********.nl
Subject: payment for runs
Date: Sat, 3 Jul 1999 13:12:20 +0200
Hail Runners,

Now that the topic of cash and credsticks is done to death, I wondered what
kind of pay you offer your runners in the game for a typical run. Do you
offer them 10,000Y for an extraction,...or would you find that to much? I
have an increasingly big problem comming up with rewards that are consistent
with the work they do.
Here in Amsterdam you could, with the right connections, get someone killed
for three beer and 5,000 guilders (about $2,500.-), but then again, this is
real life and I have no idea how to set prices. Any help would be
appreciated.

Dennis

"Abashed the Devil stood,...and felt how awful Goodness is..."
Message no. 2
From: Manx timburke@*******.com.au
Subject: payment for runs
Date: Sat, 03 Jul 1999 23:07:26 +1000
At 13:12 3/07/99 +0200 Dennis Steinmeijer wrote
>Hail Runners,
>
>Now that the topic of cash and credsticks is done to death, I wondered what
>kind of pay you offer your runners in the game for a typical run. Do you
>offer them 10,000Y for an extraction,...or would you find that to much?

It depends if you mean 10,000Y each or per member of the team?
When you (as Johnson) negotiate with the runners a rate of
pay there are many factors that you need to determine. Check out
p.99 of the SR3 Companion, the bit entitled "Payment and Reward."
Don't pay so much attention however to the "Baseline Shadowrun
Payment Table" on p.100 as I think you'd be better off working
at Stuffer Shack at those rates as there are two many variables
that the table just cannot take into account.

> I have an increasingly big problem comming up with rewards
> that are consistent with the work they do.

Okay that's fair enough. Why don't you give us a brief
idea of the last couple of runs that your players have
done, this way we can offer our own personal judgement.

A couple of interesting things that you can give out
as payment are things like

1) Cyberware & hospital time
2) Megacorp Shares
3) Research or programming time
4) Real Estate
5) Travel

Each of these can often lead to other adventures
in themselves. For example, instead of giving
them 10,000Y in certified cred give them 10,000Y
worth of Novatech shares. Some of them will
sell the shares immediately for the cash, some
will like to sit on their investment or 'nest egg'.
It can cause a real conflict of interest if you have a
run take place against the corp that Runner X
holds shares in. Watch the value of the shares
dive after word of those key personnel extractions
hits the trids. On the up side watch their value
grow when Novatech markets the product based
upon the datasteal that you did against Renraku
last month. This can be a bit of fun.

>Here in Amsterdam you could, with the right connections, get someone killed
>for three beer and 5,000 guilders (about $2,500.-), but then again, this is
>real life and I have no idea how to set prices. Any help would be
>appreciated.
>
>Dennis

Here in Brisbane there are people that would do it
just for the shear fun of it, as I'm sure there would
be anywhere.

The one thing that you need to balance when rewarding
your players is to make sure that they feel that they
have an incentive to run but not make them live
their lives in the gravy either. That's why payments of
either in kind or of a fluctuating value can have merit.

__________________________________
Manx // timburke@*******.com.au // #950
"It's always funny until someone gets hurt
and then it's just hilarious." - Faith No More
__________________________________
Message no. 3
From: Richard L. Riessen chrome@********.org
Subject: payment for runs
Date: Sat, 3 Jul 1999 09:27:17 -0400
Actually, I set the price to match the difficulty of the run. 10k isn't too
bad for an extraction. Considering the repair and upkeep costs of cyber and
gear, 10k can actually be scraping the barrel. Like I said, it depends on
the type of opposition, environment, and how badly they want their 'cargo'.

CT

> Hail Runners,
>
> Now that the topic of cash and credsticks is done to death, I wondered
what
> kind of pay you offer your runners in the game for a typical run. Do you
> offer them 10,000Y for an extraction,...or would you find that to much? I
> have an increasingly big problem comming up with rewards that are
consistent
> with the work they do.
> Here in Amsterdam you could, with the right connections, get someone
killed
> for three beer and 5,000 guilders (about $2,500.-), but then again, this
is
> real life and I have no idea how to set prices. Any help would be
> appreciated.
>
> Dennis
>
> "Abashed the Devil stood,...and felt how awful Goodness is..."
>
>
>
Message no. 4
From: Dennis Steinmeijer dv8@********.nl
Subject: payment for runs
Date: Sat, 3 Jul 1999 15:55:00 +0200
Manx wrote:
> Okay that's fair enough. Why don't you give us a brief
> idea of the last couple of runs that your players have
> done, this way we can offer our own personal judgement.

Well, I have four runners:

First run: rescue of a triade member who got caught by a small smuggler ring
which was smuggling in BTL's as he was trying to destroy their cargo. The
payment was 5,000Y each. Everything went well and they got payed.

Second run: since the first run went so well, one of the top members of the
aforementioned triade wanted the retrieval of a sword (focus) from a crazed
mage that lived out in the barrens. They got 5,000Y in advance each, and
another 20,000Y each if the sword was retrieved. They screwed up and didn't
get the 20,000Y each.

Third run: the triade boss was pissed to say the least. The team had gotten
into a fight (amongst eachother) over money and one had shot the other in
the leg when he threw a psychotic fit. The triade boss was a forgiving man
and broke the team up and let them do individual things to prove they were
still worthy of the triade's attention. They did alright and made about
8,000-20,000 each. Two had to rescue a kidnapped niece of the triade boss.
One had to kill a Yakuza mage, and the last had to retrieve the sword i
mentioned in the second run.

Fourth run: I stole this story from Bloodnet (computer game), where one of
the churches owed a large corp a lot of money which the church wasn't able
to pay. Long ago the church was in need of restauration and had taken out a
mortgage on their building and land to finance it. The deed to the loan was
in posession of a small corporation and the head of the corporation never
asked for his money.
Slowly MCT bought up stock of the small company and when the head died took
over the small corporation. The deed fell into the hands of a high-level
executive who was a member of an exclusive club of vampire-posers. The club
was in fact run by a very powerful vampire (hence the vampire post) who had
a thing against the church. He ordered the high-level exec to execute the
deed, which is, with combined interest and fines for the missed payments,
close to the national deficit.
The church has now hired the runners to investigate and to 'persuade' the
exec to give up this vendetta against the church. The contact within MCT is
a mid-level exec that has a grudge against the high-level exec who owns the
deed to the church grounds and wants the runners to get footage of the
high-level exec's screwing around on his wife, who is a MCT board of
director member. If he gets footage, he can ruin the high-level exec and
take control of his position. He will then get rid of the deed as payment
for his promotion.
The high-level exec gets the squeeze and approaches the runners and asks for
them to kill the mid-level and retrieve his headmemory where the footage is
stored. He will pay the group 100,000Y for that.
Eventually the trace will lead to the vampire, and with a little luck the
vampire will have gotten one of the runners so they will have to get the
vampire too.
I'm aiming for one of the cybered up ones, because I don't want him to get
turned into a vampire. I enforced the rule that a human gets turned into a
vampire after 7days/character's essence. This way a heavily cybered
character can still get the headvampire and hopefully regain his humanity
before turning into a vampire completely.
At this point in time they are trying several ways to get to the midlevel
exec to have a chat with him...he will direct them to the vampire-posing
club and the cheating high-level exec.

This is what I've done so far,...I still don't know if I'm rewarding them
enough or too much.

Dennis

"Abashed the Devil stood,...and felt how awful Goodness is..."
Message no. 5
From: Dennis Steinmeijer dv8@********.nl
Subject: payment for runs
Date: Sat, 3 Jul 1999 16:02:07 +0200
I forgot to tell you,...for the fourth run they'll get 40,000Y from the
church and one of the priests is magically active and will heal the runners
when they are in need for a reduced price. Also, they are act as a shelter
for the homeless so they can provide as a safehouse as well.

Dennis

"Abashed the Devil stood,...and felt how awful Goodness is..."
Message no. 6
From: Richard L. Riessen chrome@********.org
Subject: payment for runs
Date: Sat, 3 Jul 1999 10:19:34 -0400
I REALLY like this one. I think I need to look into this Bloodnet game.
This is a totally cool and twisted storyline. Excellent.

As for pay, yes I would accept 100k to do this.

CT

> Fourth run: I stole this story from Bloodnet (computer game), where one of
> the churches owed a large corp a lot of money which the church wasn't able
> to pay. Long ago the church was in need of restauration and had taken out
a
> mortgage on their building and land to finance it. The deed to the loan
was
> in posession of a small corporation and the head of the corporation never
> asked for his money...<--clipped for size control-->
Message no. 7
From: Gurth gurth@******.nl
Subject: payment for runs
Date: Sat, 3 Jul 1999 19:26:19 +0200
According to Dennis Steinmeijer, at 13:12 on 3 Jul 99, the word on
the street was...

> Now that the topic of cash and credsticks is done to death, I wondered what
> kind of pay you offer your runners in the game for a typical run. Do you
> offer them 10,000Y for an extraction,...or would you find that to much? I
> have an increasingly big problem comming up with rewards that are consistent
> with the work they do.

This depends mostly on the kind of power level you want to have in the
game. If you want the players to have to work very hard for everything,
pay them two thousand for a very involved run, while if you like a
campaign where everyone has all the toys, pay them that much just for
showing up at a meeting.

Another factor is how long you expect them to "lay low" between
shadowruns. The base payment should roughly be at least the character's
lifestyle cost for the down time, plus anything the player expects to
spend on the shadowrun. If they get paid less, they'll quickly run out of
money (something you can use to force them to take runs earlier than the
players might want to, BTW). For example, if the group has, on average,
Middle lifestyles and they want to do one run every two months, they
should make sure they get at least 10,000 nuyen per run, plus expenses.
However, as most shadowrunners are in this to become wealthy (whether they
succeed or not is another question), I'd expect any smart runner to want
more than that.

In my games, it's usually something between 5 and 20 thousand for a
shadowrun, per person. Things that will take little time and/or are
simple pay less, those that appear (at the start) to take longer or be
difficult will pay more, basically. For example, in the adventure I
started last night, the PCs are investigating a murder that has some
potentially disastrous consequences for the Johnson. Neither the PCs nor
the Johnson have no idea how long it will take (neither do I, to be
honest, especially with the things the players keep forgetting -- like
fingerprinting the murder weapon...) so they were offered 10,000 nuyen
each for the run. They negotiated it up to 13,000.

> Here in Amsterdam you could, with the right connections, get someone killed
> for three beer and 5,000 guilders (about $2,500.-)

Hmm... useful information... :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
E-mails uit het verleden bieden geen garantie voor de toekomst.
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Message no. 8
From: IronRaven cyberraven@********.net
Subject: payment for runs
Date: Sat, 03 Jul 1999 19:10:48 -0400
At 13.12 07-03-99 +0200, you wrote:
>offer them 10,000Y for an extraction,...or would you find that to much? I

All depends ont he specifics. What kind of opposition are we looking at?
Where are they? How is the opposition equipped? Why is it nessessary to
extract person X? Is this a willing extraction, an unwilling extraction?
Is extractee a hostage? What is the time table? Is leathal force
authorized, non-lethal only, or waste all witnesses? Is speciali equipment
required, and if so, who is paying. What is the time table?

10K-15K an opperative is what my most recent group started with, modified
by the answers above.




CyberRaven Kevin Dole
http://members.xoom.com/iron_raven/
"Once again, we have spat int he face of Death and his second cousin,
Dismemberment."
"Briar Rabbit to Briar Fox; I was BORN in that briar patch!"
Message no. 9
From: Allen Versfeld moe@*******.com
Subject: payment for runs
Date: Mon, 05 Jul 1999 08:57:48 +0200
Dennis Steinmeijer wrote:
>
<snip>
> Here in Amsterdam you could, with the right connections, get someone killed
> for three beer and 5,000 guilders (about $2,500.-), but then again, this is
> real life and I have no idea how to set prices. Any help would be
> appreciated.
>
> Dennis
>
> "Abashed the Devil stood,...and felt how awful Goodness is..."

Well I could arrange to have somebody's knees broken for a six-pack of
beer, and some favours owed... (I have friends who work as bouncers,
which means they personally know the right people)
So I expect that for a few six-packs and a few hundred rand (ie less
than $100) I could also get them killed...
*But*, and this is a big But, somebody who works for that kind of fee
can't possibly be any good...
Sure, the target will die, but the, erm, agent (good a word as any) will
probably get caught, and if he gets caught, he will probably name you as
his employer once interrogation gets under way.

If you wish to avoid such complications, I would expect that you would
have to pay closer to several tens, or even hundreds of thousands of
your local currency.
--
Allen Versfeld
moe@*******.com
Wandata

QVANTI CANICVLA ILLA IN FENESTRA
Message no. 10
From: Sommers sommers@*****.umich.edu
Subject: payment for runs
Date: Mon, 05 Jul 1999 11:08:01 -0400
At 02:57 AM 7/5/99 , Allen Versfeld wrote:
>Well I could arrange to have somebody's knees broken for a six-pack of
>beer, and some favours owed... (I have friends who work as bouncers,
>which means they personally know the right people)
>So I expect that for a few six-packs and a few hundred rand (ie less
>than $100) I could also get them killed...
>*But*, and this is a big But, somebody who works for that kind of fee
>can't possibly be any good...
>Sure, the target will die, but the, erm, agent (good a word as any) will
>probably get caught, and if he gets caught, he will probably name you as
>his employer once interrogation gets under way.

Wow, I can actually bring this back on topic!

If you have the Underworld Sourcebook, the section on the Chimera
Organization expressly talks about this. One of the online comenters
declares that he can get anyone killed for a few hundred nuyen. Then
someone else brings up the point about not being very good at it, not being
able to take out high-level targets, and won't keep their mouths shut about
the job.
Message no. 11
From: Rand Ratinac docwagon101@*****.com
Subject: payment for runs
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 19:53:32 -0700 (PDT)
> <snip>
> > Here in Amsterdam you could, with the right connections, get
someone killed for three beer and 5,000 guilders (about $2,500.-), but
then again, this is real life and I have no idea how to set prices. Any
help would be appreciated.
> > Dennis
>
> Well I could arrange to have somebody's knees broken for a six-pack
of beer, and some favours owed... (I have friends who work as bouncers,
which means they personally know the right people) So I expect that for
a few six-packs and a few hundred rand (ie less than $100) I could also
get them killed... *But*, and this is a big But, somebody who works for
that kind of fee can't possibly be any good... Sure, the target will
die, but the, erm, agent (good a word as any) will probably get caught,
and if he gets caught, he will probably name you as his employer once
interrogation gets under way.
>
> If you wish to avoid such complications, I would expect that you
would have to pay closer to several tens, or even hundreds of thousands
of your local currency.
> Allen Versfeld

And up, up, UP! - depending on who your target is, how paranoid they
are and how good their security is. You could probably get a relative
nobody killed without any fallout on your head for somewhere in the ten
thousand range. A hundred thousand could get a local big name offed
(the mayor of a mid-sized city, "C. Montgomery Burns"). Maybe 500k for
the mayor of Chicago or New York or another such big city, or for the
governor of a hick state (not naming any names :) ). You'd be looking
into the millions for someone of international fame (Governor of
Seattle in 2061, Michael Jackson (he might rate higher, though, because
of his security)). And tens (or possibly even hundreds) of millions
would get you the head of the President of the US/UCAS/Russia etc. etc.
etc.

And of course, if you're hiring the absolute best assassin you can for
the job, increase the base payment by a street index of 10 or more. :)

Anyway, that'd be my take on it. Killings are cheap. Assassinations are
pricey. End of story.

*Doc' reckons he could have someone off the Australian Prime Minister
untraceably for a couple of thou...*
==Doc'
(aka Mr. Freaky Big, Super-Dynamic Troll of Tomorrow)

.sig Sauer
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Message no. 12
From: Aaron Binns sparrow@***.net.au
Subject: payment for runs
Date: Tue, 06 Jul 1999 13:05:59 +1000
> *Doc' reckons he could have someone off the Australian Prime Minister
> untraceably for a couple of thou...*

The way security has been lately you could do it yourself - and get away
as well!

*Shameful, Simply Shameful!*

GreyWolf
Message no. 13
From: Michael & Linda Frankl mlfrankl@*****.msn.com
Subject: payment for runs
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 23:17:17 -0400
>Anyway, that'd be my take on it. Killings are cheap. Assassinations are
>pricey. End of story.


>Doc'
>(aka Mr. Freaky Big, Super-Dynamic Troll of Tomorrow)


It is typically is the difference between a horrific murder or a tragic
accident. Especially where a killing would be highly suspicious and
thoroughly investigated.

As far as run payment, I think SR3 Core mentions that a run should be worth
a nuyen figure that represents one month of lifestyle cost for all of the
players (no extra for those with several lifestyles) tempered with common
sense. I.e, five players with middle lifestyle, 25K nuyen. This is not a
constant, but I've found at my table most of the real profit comes from the
extras picked up along the way. Plus one can always offer combat pay bonuses
and remuneration percentages for damaged or lost equipment and/or medical
expenses. Anyway that's 2 cents from a new guy.

;)

Mike, aka Smilin' Jack

Further Reading

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