Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Stoneglobe on <07-05-15/1356:07>
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So as with all previous editions I've played/owned (1st, 2nd & 3rd) it seems to me that 5th edition has fallen into the same trap concerning payment for runs. Basically that the runs pay far too little to actually warrant any runner accepting the job. I've generally found that multiplying the nuyen offered by between 10 & 20 times actually makes sense.
Let's face it, why would anyone who had the money to chock their body full of cyberware, purchase a cyberdeck, run a full suite of vehicles/drones or spend years developing their magical skills even think about getting out of bed to put their lives and tech on the line for the measly cash on offer according to the rules and adventures. The costs to upgrade, repair and replace gear seem to far outweigh the money to be made.
Then it raises the question, where did all the street samurai, deckers and riggers get the cash in the first place? Sure being ex corp/military can explain the cyberware as could former criminal syndicate but it does kind of make everyone have the same rational/background. I guess it would also be fairly easy to sneak out a cyberdeck when you left as well but what about all of those vehicles/drones a rigger loves to use? How do you explain getting all of those out when you do a runner?
For me it just makes sense that the payouts should be that much greater.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and opions
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Do your missions pay 20 times as much karma as well?
If not then i would prioritise attributes and skills (and magic and race) over resorces and just buy resource heavy investments after a handful of missions....
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Do your missions pay 20 times as much karma as well?
If not then i would prioritise race, attributes and skills (and magic) over resorces and just buy resource heavy investments after a handful of missions....
Twenty times the pay would only equate to four or five times the karma. Really, a run giving 15 to 20 karma and paying around 50,000 per runner seems to be the best advancement rate to actually see measurable advancement.
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Twenty times the pay would only equate to four or five times the karma. Really, a run giving 15 to 20 karma and paying around 50,000 per runner seems to be the best advancement rate to actually see measurable advancement in my opinion.
Fixed.
Stoneglobe;
Run rewards are always going to be a table specific thing.
Some people like playing the equivalent of superhuman beings who could take on a megacorp and, with a significant amount of effort, topple it. Seriously, there's a thread for this very thing on this forum right now.
Others like playing the archetypical shadowrunners from the novels, people who seem to barely get by on a month to month basis.
Others still enjoy playing street scum gangers, people who can't even afford good weapons not to mention high-end cyberdecks and the like.
There's no "right" way to play rewards. The core book provides a guideline for how the core book lays out the game. And you'll note that the sample characters tend to have much lower dice pools than a lot of the characters on this forum, so it's all about the GM and players working together to create some sort of balance in terms of advancement. From a GM perspective, this is to my mind very much about managing expectations.
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Really, a run giving 15 to 20 karma and paying around 50,000 per runner seems to be the best advancement rate to actually see measurable advancement.
I would prioritise race and magic at your table :)
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Really, a run giving 15 to 20 karma and paying around 50,000 per runner seems to be the best advancement rate to actually see measurable advancement.
I would prioritise race and magic at your table :)
Don't see why, that rate on both provides decent advancement rate for skills, gear and attributes. Though the numbers I gave does seem to be more three or four times (20 to 25 being four to five times). The numbers awarded for cash need to be much higher than the numbers awarded for karma because the costs are exponentially higher.
The twenty karma per run mark allows an attribute of three to be raised to a four in one run (pretty good advancement rate). Any skills you want to raise won't eat up an entire run's karma until you are going from nine to ten, so you can raise a critical skill to your archetype and still have some left to raise a less critical skill or start branching out into other areas.
If you increase karma by 20 times, then you're looking at 100 karma per run, and that is just too much.
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You really want to have THIS argument? Did you even search the forums to see how this goes? (Guessing not).
First off. You get paid by what the johnson wants to pay. NOT what you feel you are worth. Just like today in the real world. (I am sure there are ten of thousands of people out there that feel their time is worth two or three or even fifteen times what they are getting paid). Now you can always turn down the job, which means you make NO money. And next month, you get to cover your living expenses out of your pocket. And the same for the month after that, and the month after that... until you go broke.
Which, when you look at the general starting cash of a player you essentially are. (You have a few hundred to a few grand left over and a hopefully, a few months of lifestyle paid up front). After that is gone, you better have something coming in, or something to sell if you want to eat.
Also, keep in mind that to the average Johnson, you are a litteral piece of shit. You are scum. You are in fact the very symbol of everything wrong with the world. And there are lots of you. If you won't take the run at the pay offered, someone else will. (And you end up with a rep for wasting Johnson's time, which in turn makes getting the next job that much harder)
As for jow your characters hot their initial gear, that is up to the players. Tes it usualky falls back on the "I'm ex <insert flavour here>" but i chalk that up to a lack of imagination on the player's behalf.
Maybe they were a street punk that ended up catching a Fixer's eye. That Fixer paid for the character's gear and cyber in exchange of runs (also explaining his skill set).
Maybe she was a low-life stock clerk at an Evo med tech facility and made off with a bunch of cyber to have installed to begin her career as a razor girl (using the excess cyber to pay the street doc for the surgeries.)
Point is, there are lots of ways they ended up with their shit that doesn't involve them having a cool million up front, nor the classic, unimaginative "I'm ex <insert flavour here>"
Then there is the mechanic side of things.
3 archtypes rely on cash for advancement (Deckers, sammy, riggers)
3 archtypes rely on karma for advancement (face, technomancers, mages)
By increasing the cash rewards, and not the karma, you accelerate the growth of 3 core archtypes while leaving 3 floundering. The face, mage and techo, while have things they CAN buy, see their most growth from the investment of karma.
While Sammies, Deckers and Riggers get the most growth out of a new piece of gear (be that cyber, bio, items, weapons, drones) by increasing run payments by 10 or 20 times, you are basically allowing 3 archtypes to advance in power after every single run, while telling 3 other archtypes they have to wait several runs for growth.
For arguments sake: lets assume 2 runs a month. If the average payout per character is $5,000 and 5 karma.
At the end of a year characters have made:
$ 120,000
120 karma.
Which is a fair bit of both. Cash characters have to be economical in their purchases but can get some nice stuff with their cash. The Karma can go towards improving their weaker areas and strengthening their primary skills. For Karma based characters, the 120 karma with mostly go towards increasing their primary stats (Res and Magic) and towards their primary skills, making it a toss up for shoring up a weak point, or improving a primary skill. While the money is nice, it will mostly go towards lesser useful items (lifestyle, clothing, reagents,) things that don't really augment their abilites (with the exception of the Face)
If you change the payouts by x10 or x20 you end up with:
$1,200,000 (2,400,000)
120 karma.
Now your riggers, sammies, and deckers ultra happy as everything they could possibly want is available because they have money to throw around. While your mages technos and faces flounder about. Sure they are swimming in money, but in terms of their growth, they are stunted out. A platinum commlink may look pretty on that mage, but it isn't going to help him cast any better. AND he has over a million in the bank!
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And what reason do runners have to run the shadows after a year? In your game? They are mega rich! Why bother getting shot at? Take your year pay, move yo a tropical island and dtink umbrella drinks on the beach all day!
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As an addendum to my previous, if there are several Awakened or Resonant characters, going to 25 to 30 per run could work as well so that they can still raise those skills/attributes and perform their "power stat" increasing (Initiation and Submersion).
Providing a good and speedy advancement rate should be the number one priority. Sluggish advancement is the worst thing that can occur with a game.
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I think the issue here is that Nuyen are not meant to be adjusted for inflation, while most readers simply use Nuyen as a stand in for priced in modern dollars or Euros. If you figure $1 in 1989 = 1 Nuyen and run if through an inflation calculator http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=5000&year1=1989&year2=2015 (http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=5000&year1=1989&year2=2015) you find that a 5,000 nuyen run should have the value of around $10,000 today. This does mean that a middle class lifestyle in the 6th world cost about $120,000 today, while a lower class lifestyle is around $48,000. Given what has happened to the American middle class over the last thirty or so years, these assumption might be about right for the U.S. in 1989.
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I think lowish pay kind of reflects the gritty nature of the game, runners are often quite desperate people in a desperate world living from moment to moment. However, as folks in the thread have mentioned this is a kind of 'table preference' aspect to the game.
I don't know about anyone else's group, but missions and pay is only a part of the game. Our group steal cars, loot cyberdecks, guns and gear, even sell the dead bodies for organs, used cyberware and even as food for ghouls, knock over drug dealers, get shot, get looted, have their cars stolen, have to pay medical bills, and have their condo blown up (2 days into paying for it). Money can go up and down in just a couple of sessions - easy come, easy go. I wouldn't get too hung up on runner pay. Being a shadowrunner shouldn't be like having a job, it's more of an "entrepreneurial" activity :)
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The problem comes when runner skills and gear mean that they can make more in some less threatening form of illegal work. Why go into a zero-zone from $10,000 when you can make the same amount smuggling goods across a lightly patrolled border.
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I think there are a lot of variables to what player rewards should be. As people pointed out though, as a GM you have to balance nuyen rewards versus Karma awards and/or allow for exchange between the two so that Karma-based chars (Mages, etc) can advance at the same rate as as nuyen based chars (deckers, etc).
I don't find that the runner motivation to do runs is really as big a problem, at least in my games. After all, in the end, players are playing to play. They just want to have fun. And they want to see their characters advance. If they advance too slowly however, they get frustrated while if they advance too quickly they achieve all their in-game goals and want to switch characters. So you have to try to strike a balance between the two.
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The problem comes when runner skills and gear mean that they can make more in some less threatening form of illegal work. Why go into a zero-zone from $10,000 when you can make the same amount smuggling goods across a lightly patrolled border.
Because smuggling goods across a border pays exceptionally less then shadow running?
Don't assume Shadowrunning is "low" paying. Its dangerous, it requires skills, and more importantly it requires contacts and other elements of the shadow community. If "smugglers" are expecting any work from the Running community (which IS their bread and butter) they have to work within the budget of said Runner community.
Meaning, if a run pays XXX
Smuggling pays xxx
And so on down the list.
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And please understand that the Nuyen/Karma calculator in the BRB is really meant for Missions play and is very standardized for that reason. All Missions characters need to be on the same pay/reward level, so that no one group "breaks" the format.
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Rewards are a balancing act. If you pay too little the players will refuse jobs and just start their own enterprises, stealing cars, hijacking, breaking into places, running contraband, etc. If you pay too much then the characters will get too comfortable and turn down jobs as too dangerous or not worth the reward. You want the characters to be hungry but not starving.
As to how they got starting gear, make it part of the backstory. Were you a military or government operative and they paid for the gear? Did you have to fake your death to get away from them? Or maybe you have the Wanted quality for running out with all that chrome. Did your deck come from your mentor? Did you loot it from a security spider who caught a .30 caliber round to the datajack? Maybe you were the new kid in a experienced group and they hit the big score, they retired and you bought yourself a fancy cyber deck and some augmentations with yours. Just some examples.
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And what reason do runners have to run the shadows after a year? In your game? They are mega rich! Why bother getting shot at? Take your year pay, move yo a tropical island and dtink umbrella drinks on the beach all day!
This is an important point. With this much cash characters are going to be retiring with permanent high lifestyles.
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For arguments sake: lets assume 2 runs a month. If the average payout per character is $5,000 and 5 karma.
At the end of a year characters have made:
$ 120,000
120 karma.
Which is a fair bit of both. Cash characters have to be economical in their purchases but can get some nice stuff with their cash. The Karma can go towards improving their weaker areas and strengthening their primary skills. For Karma based characters, the 120 karma with mostly go towards increasing their primary stats (Res and Magic) and towards their primary skills, making it a toss up for shoring up a weak point, or improving a primary skill. While the money is nice, it will mostly go towards lesser useful items (lifestyle, clothing, reagents,) things that don't really augment their abilites (with the exception of the Face)
If you change the payouts by x10 or x20 you end up with:
$1,200,000 (2,400,000)
120 karma.
Now your riggers, sammies, and deckers ultra happy as everything they could possibly want is available because they have money to throw around. While your mages technos and faces flounder about. Sure they are swimming in money, but in terms of their growth, they are stunted out. A platinum commlink may look pretty on that mage, but it isn't going to help him cast any better. AND he has over a million in the bank!
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And what reason do runners have to run the shadows after a year? In your game? They are mega rich! Why bother getting shot at? Take your year pay, move yo a tropical island and dtink umbrella drinks on the beach all day!
If you only multiply the money, then there will be some disparity, but if you multiply the Karma by 5 while multiplying the cash by, let's split the difference, 15, you end up with 600 Karma and 1.8 million in cash. Between the two of these increases, after a year in-game all of the party has the opportunity for gear upgrades (remember, those Mages and Adepts still need foci upgrades) and while those Awakened and Resonant ones likely have just increased their core ability, those mundanes are branching out to better cover holes in the team and building up to help each other out in each other's specialties.
First and foremost, again, this rate will give a real and measurable improvement as time goes on (just calculating the end result can seem misleading).
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I'd just like to point out that in second edition priority A nuyen was 1,000,000. Instead of being expected to pull a low level job about one a week, runners were the equivalent of Ocean's Eleven and pulled a gig maybe once a month - with pay around 30,000 Nuyen. Karma rewards were also higher. Then a couple of things happened. Cyberpirates pointed out that runners would be better off using that gear and training to go do something other than shadowrunning. The first draft of the cash for Karma rules set one Karma at 2,000 nuyen. This required cash payments to drop (I still like the idea of buy up to three karma each costing 1/3 of the cash rewards from a run). I remember usenet chatter about the payment guidelines in second edition cannon companion being so low that nobody could really see why anyone, other than a couple gangers hired off the street, would take the job. Third edition happened at the same time as a big push by game designers to end what we would now call bad wrong fun and emphasize low level play (didn't really work out well for any of the games that tried it). It also attempted to quash all the milspec gear that was running around in second edition (when everyone was sure that assault rifles and body armor would always be strictly regulated).
Then FASA blew up and the rewards levels from 3rd got rolled over into 4th and 20th anniversary without the new writers really thinking about them. At least as originally viewed by much of the player base, runs were suppose to pay a lot better.
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In my home game my runners earn between 10-20k for most runs and between 12-20 karma. I also allow them to give up 1/2 their money gained (not pay, total net worth of everything gained that adventure) for 2 Karma. 1/4 pay for 1/4 money gained.
Note: my game is house-ruled, everything costs 2x karma except skills which cost the standard rules. (to focus on skills vs. attributes)
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Then FASA blew up and the rewards levels from 3rd got rolled over into 4th and 20th anniversary without the new writers really thinking about them. At least as originally viewed by much of the player base, runs were suppose to pay a lot better.
Some of us have played since '89 by the by. We're old farts. :D
Money's teh most contentious topic here, I'd say, and one to walk carefully. Passions run *hot*.
Just ... be nice to one another, gang. We all love the game, 'kay?
Much love,
- Wak
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OP asked for opinions, here's mine:
I've been playing Missions legal games with the same character for almost a year now, at a sort of semi-weekly rate. She's almost made it through her first game year (she's in month 11), that includes training time, healing from cyber surgery, etc.
She's had a high lifestyle the entire time and has used up about 3.5 of her essence in cyber and bioware (almost all of it at least Alpha and some very nice Betaware), has a terrific suite of skills for her function on any team and is probably Prime Run capable.
She's currently got 100,000 nuyen banked. I've one more big cyber surgery planned at about 150,000 and then she won't have to spend money on anything more than bullets.
Once her big expenditures are done, she'll easily drag in roughly 300,000 a year to bank, which feels about right for high end, specialized mercenary work. I have been very pleased with her progression and have not once felt that the rate of rewards for runs was too slow.
So, that's my opinion.
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The Johnson may have a set amount for a run, but that doesn't mean that as you progress you won't get better (harder!) runs with commensurate increases in payment. I've made two posts that essentially describe how I handle this:
Missions are a moderately good guidepost for earnings in both money and karma; generally you earn 10,000¥ and 6-10 karma. I'll admit that I was somewhat disappointed that the GM I had at DragonCon didn't differentiate between players' RPing, just gave the entire table the same amount of karma each time. Not a terrible thing, though, since he did let me in on a full table. ;)
What can be helpful is to come up with 'baseline' figures for each sort of activity -- wetwork, intrusion, distraction, structure hit, etc. etc. Come up with multipliers -- people who have better Street Cred may well get better paydays, while those with high Notoriety and/or Public Awareness may find the Johnsons being a little tight-fisted with the money. Particularly high-risk actions, rush jobs, jobs that'll take you out of your comfort zone ('hood) or off the work list for an extended period of time, all those sorts of things could increase the cost. I like the two parts in the movie 'Ronin' -- 'Five thousand a week, with a minimum four weeks' work.' Then later, 'a hundred thousand' after a demonstration of a certain amount of 'lack of info', for what amounted to a hijacking/theft.
Now, a follow-up on that:
The multiplier I use is equal to:
1 + [ ( Karma-Earned Street Cred + Bonus Street Cred - Notoriety - Public Awareness ) / 10 ]
This gets revised after each and every run, and is NOT affected by burning street cred, getting rid of notoriety and/or public awareness, and the like; you can fake the rubes all you like, but the People Who Matter quietly pass around the real facts, which impacts your bottom line. Note that in this case, Notoriety is a penalty; if your campaign is one which rewards a certain amount of cruel, callous, antisocial behavior - and please note, a 'stone-cold killer' can be perfectly professional - then Notoriety may actually gain you a bonus, at least up to a certain level.
In regards to difficulty, no - I find the lower the level, the more difficult it really is to run; you run a higher risk of accidental player-killing. More evolved characters have more options available to them - and when you get into the higher end of skills, it takes a lot of karma to eke out that next die. There's a lot of broadening of skill bases, overlap and being able to back your teammates up, but when it takes 24 karma to boost a skill - or 45 to push an attribute up - then you have long bouts of only incremental gains to your top things.
As for the recognition factor, I'm with Namikaze. If the opposition get a chance, in whatever way, to recognize you, and your reputation is such to make them take a step back, they'll take that step. I don't recall off the top of my head if there's a skill for recognition; certainly a knowledge skill in 'Local Shadowrunners' should do it, as might 'Criminal Society' or something similar. A memory check might do it, but I think I'd give a 2-4 die penalty.
I also allow players to reduce their characters' Notoriety and Public Awareness at a 2:1 cost of Street Cred, or increase it at a 1:1 cost; The above is not entirely a matter of a Johnson being able to say "I know the real truth, and all of it;" it's more along the lines of "I know / have been told of your recent exploits." Add to that the idea that you aren't ever going to suddenly see an increase of 80%; instead, it's going to vary by ten or twenty percent from job to job.
Going by the equation, though, you WANT it to work the way it does - simply because of the 2:1 reduction ratio. If you get a Notoriety hit (-1), but spend two Street Cred (+2) to balance it out (0), you're actually down by one - 0 instead of +1. The Johnson Network (so to speak) takes into account the fact that you do good work (Street Cred 2) but may have been caught in a bad situation (Notoriety 1), and is willing to pay you what you're worth (+1) instead of what the street is saying because you spread oil on troubled waters (0).
Granted, if you keep screwing up, or keep getting caught in bad situations, your Notoriety is going to go beyond your Street Cred's capacity - even including any bonuses you may be getting - to balance out, and then you're looking at getting less than the going rate. If the GM is paying attention, though, he might start making your runs more 'rat bastard' ones that have Notoriety as a likely result - and the turning down of which might actually boost your street cred, even if your character DOES have to eat ramen for a few weeks while you look for more illegal-yet-moral work.
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I have said this before, last time this came up, but I'll say it again. If you are the game master, you should reward your players based on where you want them to go and how often you play, and not based on any BRB rules/suggestions, game economics or other meaningless data.
Does your group get together every couple of weeks or rarely plays a single game system for more than a couple of months? Then the BRB rate is probably good enough.
Do you want a street level campaign? Then keep those monetary payouts tight, but give out more contacts and such. Anytime a character can say, "I know a guy..." is worth more than almost any amount of nuyen or karma.
Does your group play epic multi-year campaigns, ending with world shaking events? Then start small and grow those rewards. You will have plenty of time to adjust your rewards.
Will your group be lucky to maintain a campaign for a year or so, but you still want world shaking events? Then pay them lots. Lots and lots, with equal amounts of karma. They will not be able to shake the pillars of heaven without it. Basically, if you want them to be Prime Runners, then reward them as such. Nuyen is easy to recover, and you can always throw bigger threats at them. Really, how are they supposed to take on the Mob, the Red Samurai, and deal with dragons if they aren't bad asses?
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For arguments sake: lets assume 2 runs a month. If the average payout per character is $5,000 and 5 karma.
At the end of a year characters have made:
$ 120,000
120 karma.
Which is a fair bit of both. Cash characters have to be economical in their purchases but can get some nice stuff with their cash. The Karma can go towards improving their weaker areas and strengthening their primary skills. For Karma based characters, the 120 karma with mostly go towards increasing their primary stats (Res and Magic) and towards their primary skills, making it a toss up for shoring up a weak point, or improving a primary skill. While the money is nice, it will mostly go towards lesser useful items (lifestyle, clothing, reagents,) things that don't really augment their abilites (with the exception of the Face)
You also have to consider the costs of shadowrunning. During 12 months, you've spent 24,000 on low lifestyle or 60,000 (half of what you've made) for medium. What about bribes, ammunition, replacing gear, or burning SINs? What if they get double-crossed, make a moral choice, or do the run as a favor to a contact and get no pay? None of that over the course of an entire year? I'd also say that with the price of decks and cyber, 120k won't get you as much as 120 karma. It's also a pretty decent amount of money. Even doubling it makes it difficult to explain why the characters would be risking their lives twice per month.
I would like to see an attempt at making rules follow through on the fluff of characters getting paid in favors, stock, corp script, equipment, and other illiquid assets. You can't pay rent (at least not as easily) with those, but you can improve characters that way. Plus, it's a good way for Johnsons and Fixers to lock the runners they've invested in into the lifestyle of running. Maybe a better lifestyle lets you launder more money, so there is a mechanical benefit to the higher lifestyles.
Without that figure the costs and lifestyle, and go for the players netting (not grossing) 2,000 nuyen per karma?
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That's the thing - do you really need rules for it, or just simple guidelines like you've just said? "Don't forget that payment can also consist of favors, corp script, equipment, access to medical care or higher-level implantations, etc." There have always been specific suggestions about this sort of thing, from the contacts/favors stuff (what's that in, Run Faster?) to recommendations on what certain corporate Johnsons prefer (in the corporation books). For example, Aztechnology Johnsons like to pay in Aztlan pesos, because they have a reeeeally hard grip on them, and would thus know exactly where and how the stuff is getting spent - and even whether or not it's the PCs using it. Evo Johnsons like to sweeten the deal by offering to pay double, but only if it's taken in Evo MetaErgonomics implants and the like.
Yes, 'value of a favor' having a better guideline is a good thing (as compared to "Dude, I borrowed your car for, like, three hours, and in exchange you want me to assault an Aztechnology Pyramid?!? Fuck you!!"), but for the most part, it is - always is - a question of what you as GM think would be good for your game. Some GMs and players like to keep their PCs having that lean-and-hungry look, barely making rent, so that they're always on the hunt for a Big Score. Some GMs are willing to go with what Mr. Black said, whether because of desire or lack of playing time, ladling on both karma and cash so that the characters can grow by leaps and bounds, to become world-travelling top-notch special operation artists. Some GMs (like me) let the payouts in the game grow more organically, cash increasing slowly as the characters gain competence, confidence, and most especially reputation. What It breaks down to is that it's all about what you and your players want for the game - now, in the near future, and in the long run.
My GM required a Reputation (Street Cred - Notoriety - Public Awareness) of 5 or above in order to get invited to invest; because of game-start choices with one of my characters, as well as the first run she was on (one which netted a hell of a lot, but then, everyone else was a 750K nuyen and a hundred karma ahead of her), she was able to invest after her fourth run - and she did, and all of her extra karma went into that in order to build up a bank. He went by the 'increases by (2d6 x 2)% every month' way, which results in insanely wealthy characters after only a year or two; I've cut that down, especially for months in whcih you aren't doing runs. They are, after all, doing insider trading, which CAN make you obscenely wealthy, but they DO have to operate under the radar, so they have to be careful. Still, after 25+ years in the biz ... you can become obscenely wealthy, even with having to spend several hundred thousand nuyen on mission essentials from time to time.
But because of how the above formula works, if you're being a good shadowrunner, you could soon be making a base of 15,000¥ instead of a base of 10,000¥ - or a base of 4,000¥, if you're crude, loud, and double-cross your Johnson on a regular basis.
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For arguments sake: lets assume 2 runs a month. If the average payout per character is $5,000 and 5 karma.
At the end of a year characters have made:
$ 120,000
120 karma.
Which is a fair bit of both. Cash characters have to be economical in their purchases but can get some nice stuff with their cash. The Karma can go towards improving their weaker areas and strengthening their primary skills. For Karma based characters, the 120 karma with mostly go towards increasing their primary stats (Res and Magic) and towards their primary skills, making it a toss up for shoring up a weak point, or improving a primary skill. While the money is nice, it will mostly go towards lesser useful items (lifestyle, clothing, reagents,) things that don't really augment their abilites (with the exception of the Face)
You also have to consider the costs of shadowrunning. During 12 months, you've spent 24,000 on low lifestyle or 60,000 (half of what you've made) for medium. What about bribes, ammunition, replacing gear, or burning SINs? What if they get double-crossed, make a moral choice, or do the run as a favor to a contact and get no pay? None of that over the course of an entire year? I'd also say that with the price of decks and cyber, 120k won't get you as much as 120 karma. It's also a pretty decent amount of money. Even doubling it makes it difficult to explain why the characters would be risking their lives twice per month.
I would like to see an attempt at making rules follow through on the fluff of characters getting paid in favors, stock, corp script, equipment, and other illiquid assets. You can't pay rent (at least not as easily) with those, but you can improve characters that way. Plus, it's a good way for Johnsons and Fixers to lock the runners they've invested in into the lifestyle of running. Maybe a better lifestyle lets you launder more money, so there is a mechanical benefit to the higher lifestyles.
Without that figure the costs and lifestyle, and go for the players netting (not grossing) 2,000 nuyen per karma?
First off, a GM shouldn't be a dick.
Yes you will get screwed sometimes, but the trend should be a move up in pay as the team encounters harder and harder missions. Not throwing the players in a meat grinder then stealing their pay or backstabbing them at the last minute. Every time. Sure, it can and will happen but it shouldn't be every time, and we both know (as players AND GMs) that the characters aren't going to let that stand...
TBH, usually the only time I screw over my players (shall we say) is when 1 of 3 things happen:
1: they screwed up, and thus fon't desirve the pay.
2: when it's a lead in to an other mission (wich usually results in them recovering their pay plus "something extra" - usually something good. Like a new deck, or drone, weapon, etc)
3: when its a "plot element" - and they usually get compensation some other way..... just not direct cash. (Coffee beans, fresh fruit, important contacts, favors, allies, and clout are samples)
And, as wyrm pointed out, some corps like to pay with goods. As do the underworld. Drugs, weapons, slaves, and even cyber/bioware tight down to foci are all things that various underworld johnsons like to pay with.
Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that Runners should only be making "$2 -5k a run forever". I am saying that the pay fits the reputation, threat, and skill level of both the Runners and the mission. As their skills and Rep grow, they get harder runs, which in turn leads to more pay per run. The issue i think, is that starting point and value of the runner.
A fresh character is assumed to have "cut their teeth" and survived at least their pro-am days. (Wouldn't know it from some builds i have seen... but yea.) BUT, they have no rep in the shadows (kinda a disconnect but hey,) so there is NOTHING that sets them appart from anyone else in the runner community - yet.
Once you fill that "yet", you pay hoes up or down with your rep (be it goid or bad.)
Basically, if you want to be paid big bucks, you have to prove it. Again and again and again. And then you get the big bucks.
(But yes, a nice GM should throw the characters a bone sometimes too. Throw in a deck upgrade, foci, cyber/bio enchancement for an exceptional job done! As "Iduno" pointed out some fixers and johnsons like stables (even if the players don't think of themselves as kept) and really, alpha wired reflexes 2 doesn't cost EVO the price they charge you.... and it will make that sammy a little more likely to take the next job that needs done too, possibly even cutting out the "Fixer" side, saving the johnson down the road...)
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Regardless of any in-setting rep or what-have-you, nice speedy character advancement in ALL aspects of every character should be number one priority. If it takes more than three sessions for the Street Sam to upgrade his implant, you are paying too little, and if it takes longer than that for the Mage/Adept to Initiate, you are giving too little karma.
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"Speedy", of course, also being a matter of discussion between you and your players.
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The Line between rigorous challenge and being a dick can get slightly blurry, when i say that what I mean is sometimes as a GM you may need to do some slightly dickish things for the sake of challenging the players . Such things should be done to put the PCs under pressure. For example things like Burn their primary life styles and/or their ID, Jackup their cyber-ware or preferred rides, run the clock down on their lifestyles, a great way to motivate them to take the next job. Go after their contacts, generates all kinds of fun plots. I wouldn't suggest any of that for initial runs or anything but, once a game is up and running things like that are totally legit tactics.
Now all actions must have consequences, and if things get too easy then your not doing players any favors by simply letting them float by.
On the payday question as far as missions go the run rewards are reasonable. It's important to recall there are different types of runs, with different types of rewards. Sometimes Runs are all about cash, and sometimes they're all about payback, and sometimes they are about keeping their respective cities a decent place to live. To say that rewards are to low is far to generalized a statement to be of real use. Rewards must be matched to effort and expense. They need to be sustainable and commiserate with risk. But they also can't be too high. Players building up to much ready cash should be realize there are risks associated with doing so.
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It's a very tricky balance to hit both the "keep the players hungry" and "make sure the players feel like their characters are actively advancing at a fun pace" buttons.
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I like this OP! Since I'm looking for a job right now, and have student loans to pay, maybe I can negotiate a higher salary based on that! They should have to pay me more based on my training costs!
wdg
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No, just on your training - which may be reflected in higher training costs, but not necessarily ...