Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Character creation and critique => Topic started by: welldressedgent on <07-31-12/1319:40>
-
Seems like it could use some work. Has anyone tried to fix it?
-g
-
Fix it how? It's a wonderful RP tool and even gives you a limited "I'm a contact too!" ability, depending on your day job.
Of course, if you're working 40/week, you should make sure that the job is at least somewhat useful, as you'll miss out on a lot of legwork. (Gunsmith maybe? :D)
-
Fix it how? It's a wonderful RP tool and even gives you a limited "I'm a contact too!" ability, depending on your day job.
Of course, if you're working 40/week, you should make sure that the job is at least somewhat useful, as you'll miss out on a lot of legwork. (Gunsmith maybe? :D)
Agreed, there isn't really any 'fixing' to do with it, in my opinion.
The rigger being a mechanic and owning a garage is a good choice too :)
-
I like taxi driver with a few regulars. Trying to be at several places at once is a pain in the ass.
If I wanted to fix something, I'd get rid of the SINer requirement. There's thousands of jobs you don't need a SIN for. The quality doesn't account for criminial jobs, like a forger etc.
-
I'm thinking that maybe it shouldn't be a flaw, and could use some variation in salary.
-g
-
The text describes the table as a guideline, and says the GM and the player should set the particulars. For instance, a job as an exotic dancer might pay better, but have more hindrances.
The main reason it is a flaw is that it is a commitment that cuts into the time the character can actually spend shadowrunning. In practice, this can be hard to do. You don't want to have someone drive half and hour to your place to play the game, then tell them "Sorry, your character can't play tonight because he needs to wash dishes at the diner again." But the day job should be an inconvenience, and should clash with some part of a run, such as surveillance or legwork, every now and then. Something like "this represents the minor hacking work my character does on the side in his downtime" is not a day job flaw, in my opinion.
-
You could use Gerzel's rules from Dumpshock.
"Salary/Month pay is like this:
1,000 costs 5 bp
2,500 costs 10 bp
5,000 costs 15 bp
7,500 costs 20 bp
10,000 costs 25 bp
12,500 costs 30 bp
+2,500 costs +5 bp
Work hours are as follows:
10 hrs/wk is worth -10 bp.
20 hrs/wk is worth -20 bp.
40 hrs/wk is worth -30 bp.
Options
Flexible Hours costs 5 bp. The employer is flexible from week to week how many hours are worked and will allow for extended "off" or "vacation" time as long as the PC makes up the time in the coming month. Generally as long as the hours for one month are put in the employer is happy.
Boss From Hell is worth -5 bp. The employer or job is overly demanding and/or combative with the character sucking more than just their time from them. This is meant to give the GM more leeway in adding complications to the PCs life from their job. The PC is encouraged to describe the exact nature the Boss From Hell takes.
Thus a player can take a Day Job that pays better as a positive quality (perhaps a successful rockstar working 20 hrs/week including practice and stage time and making 10,000 or more a month off of it. Also this could be used to represent income a PC gets from using their skills, such as a Hacker earning money by programming on the side.
Total Cost
Just take the sum of the Work Hours and Salary/Month adding in any options to determine the total cost of the Job Quality. PCs may take multiple Job Qualities but may not take more than 40 hours/week in total(multiple jobs might represent a mix of legal income connected to a SIN and illegal income). If the total cost is positive or zero then the quality is a positive quality, if it is negative then it is a negative quality.
Quitting & Getting Fired
If a player quits or is fired from a job then they simply lose the income if it was a positive or net 0 quality. The GM may allow the PC to get the job back through role-playing, reduce the karma cost of a new job the character takes or give the character a good quality of lesser value at the GM's sole discretion dependent on the circumstances of the job loss. If you quit a good job the GM is not required or obligated in anyway to replace or refund the points it was worth. If the quality was negative the character gains a new negative quality determined by the GM of the same point value unless the PC pays off the cost of the negative quality with karma.
By our (well my as I'm the GM) rules both the hours and the pay are added together and the result is treated as a single quality. This can also be used to help represent what
***Edit***
I changed the Salary/Month table so the entire table increments at a flat 2,500 nuyen.gif per month. This scale seems to fit the rules better. "
-
I've just done a comparison with the trust fund quality. For 10BP you have a middle lifestyle, which you can get here with:
Salary 5000 (15BP)
10hr/week (-10BP)
flexible hours (5BP)
also gives you 10BP to pay. That looks OK.
On the other hand you can get for instance 7500 nuyen/month for free if you take 20hr/week. And 20 hours is still doable for a shadowrunner. Unless I've miscalculated somewhere?
-
I'd halve the bonuses for hours/week. Then 5K/40hrs is free, but thats legit because of the time consumption. 1k/10hrs being free is fairly balanced as well, as is 2500/20hrs. But anything over just paying Middle Lifestyle would still cost you, and quickly as pay went up.
-
You could use Gerzel's rules from Dumpshock.
"Salary/Month pay is like this:
1,000 costs 5 bp
2,500 costs 10 bp
5,000 costs 15 bp
7,500 costs 20 bp
10,000 costs 25 bp
12,500 costs 30 bp
+2,500 costs +5 bp
Work hours are as follows:
10 hrs/wk is worth -10 bp.
20 hrs/wk is worth -20 bp.
40 hrs/wk is worth -30 bp.
I like the setup overall, but I think I'd change the hours/week part, as follows:
- 10 hrs/wk is worth -0 bp
- 20 hrs/wk is worth -5 bp
- 30 hrs/wk is worth -10 bp
- 40 hrs/wk is worth -15 bp
Options
I'd add these:
Criminal SIN, +5BP - because it can be hard for an ex-con to find good work ... if you have a Criminal SIN, and want it tied to your Day Job, you must take this.
SINless +10BP - but it's harder if you don't even legally exist ...! If all you have is a Fake SIN, or no SIN at all (that you're willing to use), you must choose this.
So for a SINless runner, the "free" income bar rises in relation to hours-per-week. Quite steeply - yes, 40 hours/week, for only 1,000 nuyen. Welcome to the sweat shop, peon. 8)
OTOH, if you want a regular day job that doesn't require any degree of SIN, you can ... it'll just cost you more BP to get the income you want.
-
Unclear; but a great idea, if I understand it right...
1,000 ny poor
2,500 lower class
5,000 middle class
10,000 upper class
20,000 rich
50,000 richer
100,000 Mitt Romey
10 hours = poor
20 hours = lower class
40 hours = middle class
Move down one level if: born rich, college educated, made man, technically educated, privileged family or famous (per level)
Move up one level if: SiNless, uncouth, uneducated or illiterate
Move up one level if: criminal SiN (non-criminal white collar jobs only)
-g
-
No wait. I totally misunderstood. It's the cost of the the job.
So an Upperclass SINless full-timer spends 20bp. Got it.
-g
-
One thing you're missing is that depending on the campaign, this quality essentially gives you freebie points - the character's day job in this case IS going on missions. E.g., when running a corporate campaign, have the character's Day Job be "Corporate Hitman" and have him deal with chain of command, bureaucracy, etc., but still get a regular paycheck bashing street runners' heads. Or, have an undercover cop character spying on the team, and the day job would consist of making notes and reporting to superiors.
-
One thing you're missing is that depending on the campaign, this quality essentially gives you freebie points - the character's day job in this case IS going on missions. E.g., when running a corporate campaign, have the character's Day Job be "Corporate Hitman" and have him deal with chain of command, bureaucracy, etc., but still get a regular paycheck bashing street runners' heads. Or, have an undercover cop character spying on the team, and the day job would consist of making notes and reporting to superiors.
In a distinctly non-standard campaign like that, the GM should simply disallow Day Job entirely. Or rename it, to "moonlighting", explaining that it's another job you do on the side. That's the intent, after all: in addition to shadowrunning, you also have another job (which isn't worth RPing every work-hour of).
-
The reason that GM approval is the last step of character creation is precisely to prevent attempted rules exploits such as that. The entire reason that day job is a negative quality at all, is that it represents an inflexible time commitment that negatively impacts time available for shadowrunning, in addition to presenting a possible way for enemies to find the character. A job with flexible hours, or one where the character gets extra money on the side to narc out the other runners, is hardly a negative quality.