Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: Senko on <05-04-14/0429:25>
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Obviously there's downtime and the like but when the character are just sutting around going "Tum te tum, tum, tum I'm living my normal life." How much time do you have pass there? A wek between runs, a few days, every 1d4 weeks they get a call?
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I just do a run each month, and have the runners earn a bit of extra cash on the sides in downtime. The next run is an exception, taking place 2 hours after the current to get the heck out of Seattle and still get paid for it.
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In third edition, we had a run each month. For 5th, my group averages one run each week. Partly we feel that the characters start out scruffier... otherwise they'd be stealing cars to make ends meet.
I find if a run takes several sessions of game time, it's better for pacing to give longer downtime and a bonus of some kind for the run.
Also understand that downtime directly influences how fast characters spend their karma and power up. At one run per week, specializations and training group skills is pretty out-of-reach, but training attributes seems to coincide nicely with karma rewards.
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One run per week in-game time sounds rather much. You pay 2 grand in lifestyle, maybe 1k in expenses on a run, and the default run with somewhat-decent opponents already pays 12k, 13k or more after Negotiation, and 6 karma. That's 10k profit a month. If you're doing four runs per month, you're doing about 45k and 24 karma a month. Meanwhile, we got big heavy NPCs in a book living on 6 karma a month over a total timespan of 4 decades.
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one run per week is how i do it.
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One run per week in-game time sounds rather much. You pay 2 grand in lifestyle, maybe 1k in expenses on a run, and the default run with somewhat-decent opponents already pays 12k, 13k or more after Negotiation, and 6 karma. That's 10k profit a month. If you're doing four runs per month, you're doing about 45k and 24 karma a month. Meanwhile, we got big heavy NPCs in a book living on 6 karma a month over a total timespan of 4 decades.
And interesting way to look at it. On one hand I'd say you definitely shouldn't rush the PCs through growth (because that takes a bit of the satisfaction away) but on the other, they're still doing the work so it's not exactly a free lunch.
I could see one run week if your runners were making like 5-6k a run, doing stuff like "chump" work mainly for gangers and stuff. I mean... There's nothing that really says anywhere that one run a week is impossible, just that I suppose it may be a bit of a stretch to assume your fixer is able to find so many jobs for you. Again though, if you're just working for various gangs or syndicates doing relatively small-time stuff (because looking at the suggested pay, 6k would be the base pay for something that has no other modifiers than "they have 8 as their highest dice pool") then maybe it wouldn't be so hard to find work.
Plus it's always safe to assume PCs see a bit more action than most NPCs; probably because the NPCs have been around for multiple editions and the developers didn't want to make all of them thousands-of-karma unstoppables like the PC I've seen of the people who actually kept the same character through editions.
After a while you'll kind of need to slow down though. The players will likely have money and karma to spend that may very well take them over a week to use. Improving an attribute, increasing a Skill to Rating 5 or higher, and getting a Skill Specialization all take weeks. If you use the rules for making an Arcana test for Initiation (though I don't, personally) than that could take months to do as well.
I usually tend between two weeks to two months between runs; usually by looking at the payout and the events. If it was a pretty big run and some drek hit the fan, then usually the wait will be longer. If it is really quick and everyone comes out relatively unscathed, then it's a shorter wait. Because I figure, their fixer looks at them and goes "...You guys are fine, you'll be ready to make more money for me in only a few days!" Worth asking is if the videogames are any good examples; in Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall you are presented with what jobs are available and can choose whether or not to take them up whenever you want. In an actual game, I would definitely make it clear that the jobs have time constraints (nobody is willing to wait a month and a half for a team of runners) but otherwise, it's mostly up to the team to decide if they're ready to jump right into another run.
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It's usually up to them. If they wanna increase skills, get implants, build something, buy equipment or whatever, they spend however long it takes to do that doing that. If they start calling around, looking for work right away, they do that.
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I could see one run week if your runners were making like 5-6k a run, doing stuff like "chump" work mainly for gangers and stuff. I mean... There's nothing that really says anywhere that one run a week is impossible, just that I suppose it may be a bit of a stretch to assume your fixer is able to find so many jobs for you. Again though, if you're just working for various gangs or syndicates doing relatively small-time stuff (because looking at the suggested pay, 6k would be the base pay for something that has no other modifiers than "they have 8 as their highest dice pool") then maybe it wouldn't be so hard to find work.
Yeah, if you do really low jobs, and never get heavily outnumbered or whatever, such milk runs would be doable at more than 1 per month. But even then I wouldn't do 4 per month, that's crazy. You'd be gaining WAY too much karma and nuyen that way. It might take a lot of sessions, but it's a bit unbelievable that you'd gain ~250 karma per year.
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Some interesting examples thanks. I've been reading the season 1/2 missions and its over and over again your starving and need rent money. Occasionally sure but they overdo itin my opinion. It seens a good compromise is to give the players as much time (normally) as they want to train skills and then allow 1d4 weeks to their next run.
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Season 1/2 is SR3, so hardly representative, and it's flavour text anyway. You could have someone with Squatter lifestyle and 100k saved up in SR5 Missions and the flavour text remains the same. With the rewards SR5 Missions give out, some CMPs are cheap but about every run is an easy 12 grand after Negotiation, and that's before fencing loot. And if you follow SR5 Core's suggested rewards, it'd be 12 grand BEFORE Negotiation, and likely the Johnson doesn't have the 13+ dice that the SRM-5A Johnsons have.
If you do want the possibility to have rent stress, make it 1d6 weeks if they're not actively looking. With the default rewards, any decent kind of job is already 10 grand profit per month then, and if they spend too much they might find the landlord breathing down their neck. They'd start looking for more jobs and end up with a chance to prove themselves worthy for tougher, better-paying, jobs instead.
Something else you can do, which I'm doing, is letting the runners also earn a bit of cash on side-jobs during downtime, based on their characters. This is pretty much a bit of free cash with chances for RPing downtime stuff, and while it won't pay the rent (so they still gotta run), it means they're not just doing nothing inbetween runs.
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That's just it I feel the real stress is lost and it just becomes annoying when every other runs flavour text starts off with your broke again. I think I'll go with 1d4 weeks from each run (unless therws special circumstances) or the end of downtime.
I mean the whole rents due doesn't work when you paid for 4 months rent out of the last runs profits and now you suddenly can't make it again what happened to that 8-20k and how come the guy who paid for 1 month doesn't lose a similar amount.
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It's just flavour text, really. There's nothing wrong with ignoring it. When a player paid his rent, it doesn't mean he just lost the rent money just because the text tries to put some flavour in.
And to be honest, my Missions players DO end up being broke every time. Heck, I started without enough money to even pay a cab sometimes, and I don't play, I just spend my GM Rewards. Only some save up for the shiny toys, others spend things asap. When I played Dragon's Song 1, I believe I had 5 nuyen to my name, and everything I had recently bought I actually used during that run.
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I know its just flavour text but some things in my opinion should not be used as flavour text like the start to mission 10 in season 2 where it say's they've just been paid for a run when they get intercepted and recruited for a second. I'm sorry but if the GM opens the game with "He counts the money out paying you for the job you just completed" I'm going to want to know how much and what the Karma I earnt was to add it to my character before starting the nights adventure. Once I've gotten that settled I'm going to want to know why I'm suddenly taking jobs for a group I've had multiple-negative encounters with in the past including killing a lieutenant of their organization.
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Somebody, somewhere in the 'plex, is always hiring for some kind of work. The lucky runners are the ones that can afford to turn a job down.
My players set the pace as to how often they want their characters to work - but they tend to go with only having 1 job at a time, and only looking for the next job once the whole team has recovered from the last run (and any recovery time needed because of new augments).
...of course, the character's looking for work too often (or not often enough) can color their reputation; You work too few jobs in a year and people forget about you, work too many and they start thinking maybe you've got a condition or something that's gonna make it less likely their job gets done. (Like a death wish, or crushing debt you might be crippled for not paying at any minute.)
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I know its just flavour text but some things in my opinion should not be used as flavour text like the start to mission 10 in season 2 where it say's they've just been paid for a run when they get intercepted and recruited for a second. I'm sorry but if the GM opens the game with "He counts the money out paying you for the job you just completed" I'm going to want to know how much and what the Karma I earnt was to add it to my character before starting the nights adventure. Once I've gotten that settled I'm going to want to know why I'm suddenly taking jobs for a group I've had multiple-negative encounters with in the past including killing a lieutenant of their organization.
Yeah, except no. There's some suspension of disbelief in Missions in general. A runner can easily spend 4 weeks of downtime inbetween Dragon's Songs, or Deconstructing Patriots and Congressional Conspiracies. You abstract from that, put it aside, just like how you can meet someone at a job and have spent 6 months or worse since the last run you did with them, while for them it was yesterday. And how you might have killed someone, but most people let him walk, so you find out he walked half a year later. It's like Baldur's Gate 2, "Didn't I kill you?" You don't let that get in the way, just like how you don't care that someone else did the same job but you never saw their face. If you can't, then you're right, you shouldn't be playing Missions.
And why aren't you changing the flavour text anyway? It's not as if there's a use to officially playing them by now, so I assume you're running a homegame anyway. When I ran part of Season 4 as homegame campaign, I heavily edited some parts to make it make sense outside the realm of Missions.
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Actually I've just been reading through the older ones unlikely to be played to get a general idea of how it works (theme, nature of things rather than specific rules) and I have a problem with flavour text that opens a mission saying your being paid when your actually not.
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Then ignore it. It's part of the Missions setup, and in some cases it, plot-technically, probably did involve a job happening directly after another, like Dragon's Song does. It's just flavour text. It's only a problem if you want to make it one.
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I two main factors (and some minor ones) determine how much time passes between runs. The minor factors are things like injuries, healing time, training time, etc., but I have been known to start a run before these are finished, and just add time after the run to the process to complete.
The main factors are
1) I started my game in the 2050's, with 1st edition mods, and I am working to get through some of the major Lore adventures. My group is new to shadowrun, and knows nothing (except minor blurbs in the history section) about some of the major happenings in the world. So, I am picking and choosing some of the ones that drop the biggest bombs in the metaplot. In any case, the main factor of this is that I skip large periods of time, as I still need to reach the 2060's, etc.
2) Success/Failure of the previous run. After Mercurial, their names were pretty heavy on the streets, so a lot of the Fixers with subtle jobs passed them by. Recently, I had a mini side job to fill a short session. It was a friendly bet between two opposing high ups in the military. One was paying off a bet with a tanker truck of beer, the receiving end was waiting to ambush the Runners with a brawl before the beer could be delivered, and then they could all partake in some of the beer together, but one of the Runners had to bring out an assault rifle and threaten the opposition.. So, their Employer (and the Fixer contact that arranged the job)) were very unhappy with them after that, so more jobs and time passed them by.
tl:dr How they performed on their previous job(s) is one of the main factors in how much time I have pass before someone seeks them out for a job
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I would say on a meta-level, one every 3-4 weeks, if the standard rate is 3k each. If they get too rich too fast, they'll just retire to the Carribean League-- which might be a fun prime runners session or few-- but hungry runners take the jobs with less fuss.
If they're getting jobs more frequently, those jobs should pay pretty marginally. There's no shortage of people who can break a window and grab a trid set., after all. If the runners as a group have a specialty, that's going to net them some higher pay in that area, just because it's easier for the fixer to... uhm... sell them upstream.
Of course, It's really going to depend on their fixer(s), whether the job goes to them or someone else.
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I let my runners determine the pace of runs. They need down time to train new skills, bind new foci or acquire new gear. If however they aren't in need of training or downtime I just give them a week between runs for them to get a little time to take care of daily lives, After all you aren't a runner 24/7 and players and characters need time to take care of IC things such as, eating, sleep, or spending time with dependents or contacts to keep them in good graces.
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The GM of my face to face group tried to play it as one run a month.
The group decided to practice firing our new weapons. By going into the middle of gang territory and using gang members as targets. We're now nicknamed the Reapers of Sorrow by the Wichita gangs. The GM decided we need to be a wee bit busier after that.
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Poor gangers all they wanted was to learn to be racecar drivers.
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Well I agree that targeting gangers is a one way to improve fire arms I think that ought to get a little retribution from the gangs. :P At the end of one of our sessions the GM gave us a month off, during that month I had no skill train and no cyberware but the team really needed gear, so I got with my GM and got to actually plan the groups next run where we robbed a rich weapon collector of various assault rifles, panthers assault weapons and a couple high value pieces of art, foci and other stuff. Players with down time can be a source of runs at times. 8)
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I would say on a meta-level, one every 3-4 weeks, if the standard rate is 3k each. If they get too rich too fast, they'll just retire to the Carribean League-- which might be a fun prime runners session or few-- but hungry runners take the jobs with less fuss.
That seems a bit too harsh, actually - somewhere between 6k and 10k per month, pre-expenses, seems about right to me.
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I do every two weeks.
This gives them time to get almost any gear they want between, and I don't follow the rules on leveling up skills.
When leveling up skills, they can do 1 point for the downtime even if it is raising from a 6 to a 7 because I assume that they are still improving their skill every single week anyways so this is just them putting in the extra time to push over the envelope. And it makes it simpler.
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Would your two-week system still work if you weren't houseruling training times, Reiper?
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Would your two-week system still work if you weren't houseruling training times, Reiper?
It would make training higher level rather impossible for the most part, or at least it would end up taking a few runs to get the upgrade done on top of the karma cost.
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I like to do 3 or 4 runs almost back to back then take time off to train and add/upgrade lifestyles etc.. All of my PC's characters are somehow connected (though they may not know it) on a massive 'contact tree' drawn out on a piece of poster board with about 60 names on it. It looks like something off the wall of the police station in an episode of NCIS! This allows my players to focus on another set of characters for a time while the first group is in downtime. I have the group do 2 or 3 'normal' payout missions. Then the 'season finale' is a high payout run or series of runs. I often create this run as a backfire to something they did in a previous run. This finale comes with a high pay-out - enough to pay for upgraded gear and training and to get ahead on lifestyle payments.
I don't really have to worry about how fast the characters make money. I learned early on the dark side of allowing players to have everything they want/need at char gen. I want my players to start off with as little as possible. Even if you chose resources for priority A, your still not starting off with high lifestyle, 3 cars and doc wagon platinum. Buy up all the foci or cyberware you want, but in the end your character can only start off with a few weapons and a backpack full of stuff. Players always want new toys... that's part of the fun. This way they have to upgrade commlinks and upgrade lifestyles and all kinds of expensive stuff before they can even THINK of looking for things like mono whips and assault cannons. Does that make sense? It's what I like to call "The Eat Your Vegetables First" rule. If you want ice cream you gotta eat your broccoli first. Make your characters fill out a "First things to do/upgrade list" and make them stick to that. Another thing you can do is make your campaign so frickin lethal that they players wouldn't dare step foot out of the barrens without proper paperwork on everything and a flawless fake SIN. Make whatever it is they THINK they need an assault cannon for and make it the least of their worries.
Another thing that I still do is base their pay per mission on their lifestyle costs like we did back in 3rd edition. That way, they are always so worried about stuffing money under the mattress to upgrade their lifestyle that they stop asking to buy the expensive crap that they really don't need anyway. And if they do you can just give them the, "Ok, you lease a 12 x 12 section of a parking deck from the local go-gang/organ-leggers. You have no vehicle and no clothes other than the ones your wearing. You don't even have a bed or a place to store your things and you want to buy a 23k Krime Bomb?"
Ok I'm rambling off topic again...
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I assume you give some starting runs in the barrens then so those who can barely afford an R1 Sin can put together the money to buy an R3-6?
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Absolutely. Low life style cost 2k/month so my starting barrens runs pay out about 2k per run. Now these runs are short and simple so you can do 3 or 4 in a month. That's 6 to 8k a month to a character with only 2k a month in costs. That should be enough to buy a lv 2 SIN, a commlink and a toy or two. Next month he can upgrade those and buy another toy or two. A few months in the barrens should yield more than enough money to get out.
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And how do you handle the Karma/Nuyen disparity that would come along with that?
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I have a system where I add one week of downtime per karma spent. That way the players get to decide how much karma they wanna spend and how much they can afford to spend before the lifestyle has to be paid.
I make exeptions for karma cost in spell learning and other fast ways to spend karma. This gives me an approximate length of the down time between runs.
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I have a system where I add one week of downtime per karma spent. That way the players get to decide how much karma they wanna spend and how much they can afford to spend before the lifestyle has to be paid.
I make exeptions for karma cost in spell learning and other fast ways to spend karma. This gives me an approximate length of the down time between runs.
That gets very problematic (in particular, but not exclusively, at the high end), though - with skills going to 12, and the costs of Attributes and Skill groups, you're looking at as much as half a year of downtime on that basis (just getting an Attribute to 7 is 9 months under that system). Did you have some sort of houserule or workaround? Do you find that your players respond by just not spending the karma on things they might otherwise want because the downtime is unmanageable?