[Senko]

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?

[Michael Chandra]

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.

[JimmyCrisis]

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.

[Michael Chandra]

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.

[Shamie]

one run per week is how i do it.

[firebug]

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.

[Poindexter]

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.

[Michael Chandra]

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.

[Senko]

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.

[Michael Chandra]

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.

[Senko]

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.

[Michael Chandra]

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.

[Senko]

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.

[Noble Drake]

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.)

[Michael Chandra]

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.