[Erling]

Greetings, fellow GMs

Tell me, please, how strictly do you follow rulebook's guidelines about cash rewards?
I find them too restraining and a bit harsh. Fighting Yakuza (e.g. highest dice pool 12) and being outnumbered 3 to 1 result in 12 000¥. So fighting 12 yaks in a single combat gives you enough cash for ~2.5 months of Medium Lifestyle ("a lifestyle of an ordinary wage-earner").
I usually tend to give my players' characters a bit higher prizes. For instance, breaking and entering into A-corp facility provides at least 12 000¥ (highest dice pool 12, very scarce security - runners aren't outnumbered) because, well, runners risk their lives, they can run into KE patrols and so on. Clashing AAA-corp almost always provides at least 25 000¥.
On the other hand, obviously easy job (breaking into no-tell motel or corner shop) is not a job for a pro, even street gangers are capable of fullfilling it. Thus reward can be about 1000¥.

BTW, Splintered State adventure provides about 75 000¥ reward per runner in average (if there are four PCs in the team. If less runners are involved, individual's share will be even higher)! It's SIGNIFICANTLY higher than book's guideline, even taking into account that opposition in Splintered State is quite harsh.

[Glyph]

I don't find the cash rewards too plausible, myself.  Especially since some characters are so gear/augmentation dependent.  Runners should get paid a lot more, although lower awards might fit certain styles of campaigns (street scum games where the characters are always one step away from eating out of a dumpster, and the only way to realistically upgrade your 'ware is to indenture yourself to a corporation or a syndicate).  I think it is crucial to balance cash and Karma, because if you don't, characters such as hackers and street samurai will stagnate while adepts and mages will initiate multiple times (the higher skill caps ameliorate this slightly, but gear is still a major vector of improvement for mundane characters).

[Erling]

Yeah, that's what I take into account as well. Most worthwhile pieces of 'ware (Rating 2 or so) cost 45 000¥ - 60 000¥ in average. That means obtaining new combat augmentation is worth ~7 runs (taking into account Lifestyle payments). But street sam usually has good chrome at the very beginning of the campaign, and he wishes to become stronger and faster. To do so he will need 150 000¥ worth augs.

[MijRai]

I find the nuyen rewards are far too low as well.  My Shadowrun GM had his own reward set-up, and also provided his reasoning; "The Rule of Americar".  If you can make more money boosting cars than by really risking your life on 'runs, why the hell are you 'running, omae? 

Though, the example about the Yakuza from Erling is a little biased.  Keep in mind, a single fight against twelve guys does pay for 75 days of living better than the majority of metahumanity across the world (seeing as the majority are in the Low or Squatter category). 

As near as I can tell, the values for the nuyen reward table are good for covering expenses and a lifestyle; it doesn't really cover upgrades. 

Another way to fix this, depending on your interpretation of the setting, is to supplement your pay with acquiring loot on the job.  In one of the games I was in, we raided a BTL studio, and managed to grab a bunch of 'chips on our way out.  Selling those (at 30% value, still a profit for us, since they were free) got us a good cache of money for the team on top of our pay.  Of course, this is, like I said, up to the interpretation of the setting.  Some perspectives put in a lot more things that make such activities less desirable. 

[The_Hyphenator]

Yeah, I quickly realized that the Nuyen rewards weren't really adequate, especially since my group only meets about once per month. So I just went ahead and started doubling them, and that worked pretty well.

[LionofPerth]

Personally I think they're just a little too low, in between the Americar rule, as well as the fact they're breaking the law..... it's not enough. They'd need something more in my mind to run in the first instance.

Personally I'm getting around this in two ways. The first is that I'm having my Johnson get them on a 12 month contract, he needs a go-to strike team, intelligence gathering team, whatever the group turns out to be. He needs them on short notice, 48 hours anywhere in the world. He simply doesn't have time to recruit individually for each job and choose the best, or spend a day or two making calls and waiting for people to get back to him.

The other part of it is that I wanted the group to have a pretty respectable life style, something that gives them at least a Medium life style for the year. I don't want to be too generous, ie High, but on the same side, Low or Squatter, yeah, I don't think so. Especially if you're a respectable, starting to be known Runner.

So, the contract he's offering to the group is a 150K Nuyen for the year, 50K unfront, 5K a month with a 40K completion bonus. I'm almost definitely adjusting some of those number. Either way, considering what he expects of them, as well as their own stated goals, I expect some purchasing to be done at the start, go bags made and a whole lot of money being thrown about.

It also means that the group can focus on upgrades without needing to focus on just trying to stay with a roof over their head and ammunition in the magazines. it gives them the freedom to do what they want.

[emsquared]

While I also reward my players at higher rates than what is "recommended", I would like to provide an important counterpoint for new GMs (or players);
SR is not D&D (or Pathfinder, etc.).

By which I mean, players (or GMs) may have to temper their expectations for progression. In the majority of cases, going off of purely anecdotal/personal observational evidence, it seems like SR is not most people's first foray into table-top gaming. Most people (again, IME) it seems it's a d20 system/game. The thing about d20 games is the mechanical progression is so noticeable with new bonuses and/or capabilities coming every level, a late campaign or even mid to early progression characters can be exponentially more powerful than a new character. Accordingly, so are (or perhaps because of) the rewards for adventures, every adventure you're getting new toys and abilities. SR is of course not that.

What can a player expect, depending on the build/goals of the PC, maybe a 50 -100% increase in his primary pools over the course of a career (compared to a d20 PCs bonuses, which are more like 600%+ increase)? A lot of new players I think are disappointed by the mechanical progression (or lack thereof) in their character in SR (though 5E has taken some steps to remedy this). Just to get a couple more dice can be a long term goal for a PC.

Accordingly, there is a danger in trying to meet what might be a players (or GMs) expectations of having new toys at the conclusion of every story arc or run as that scalability is just not there. It's very easy to give a boat-load of loot when you realize things have fallen behind, it's much harder to take things away (or even put on the brakes) once things are rolling as if you decrease rewards PCs could feel like they're taking steps backward in their career. It really requires a good grasp of your (as GM) and the player's goals for the campaign, and what/how much they need to achieve them. As others have mentioned it's very important (IMO, more important than giving the "right" amount of Y after each run) to balance the karma v. Y rewards.

[Namikaze]

Emsquared, once again your insight is invaluable.  I like to award my players with a little extra nuyen for their hard work as well, but that's because nuyen is pointless without things to spend it on.  And without those all-important Contacts (or a well-stated Face) you won't have a lot of selection.  So my players come up with other unique uses for their money.  They like to use their money to buy upgrades for their hideout, extra hideouts and identities, and all the extra stuff that most players take for granted.  It's not always going to come in handy, but when it does they are always extremely grateful for that extra boost to income.  The karma is the real stickler - even 1 extra karma per game can throw things out of whack fairly quickly (I play weekly, so it adds up fast).  On the other hand, if your games are more spread out then a higher karma reward makes a lot of sense.  And don't forget to give the players downtime so that they can use that hard-earned nuyen and karma.  All of these things simply don't exist in most games, and so the whole mechanical system for Shadowrun is way outside most people's expectations.

TL;DR - Emsquared is right.

[LionofPerth]

Or a shorter version, know thy group. Tell them what they should expect from the get go and just be honest.

[Poindexter]

Another way to fix this, depending on your interpretation of the setting, is to supplement your pay with acquiring loot on the job.  In one of the games I was in, we raided a BTL studio, and managed to grab a bunch of 'chips on our way out.  Selling those (at 30% value, still a profit for us, since they were free) got us a good cache of money for the team on top of our pay. 

This is a BIG part of the solution, although not a full fix.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Simply put, the better you get, the more you should get paid.  I pondered this for a while, and played around with some computer simulations, until I hit upon something I find to be ideal: the book prices are the standard run prices for a starting shadowrun character.  Someone who's been in the biz and is still at the sharp end ain't gonna get paid the same piddly amount as some grunt shadowrunner just starting out.

"But Wyrm, how the hell do you figure out how much a PC is worth??"  Simple, says I.  At character start, assemble this clever little formula:

1 + [ (Street Cred - Notoriety - Public Awareness) / 10 ] = Runner Value

Whenever you give Street Credit, Notoriety, or Public Awareness, apply them directly to this formula; even if they burn Street Cred in order to reduce Notoriety and Public Awareness, the people in the shadows (and those who hire them) are going to remember it.  Similiarly, if you consistently do a bang-up job, they're going to remember that, too.  Also, don't forget to add the 1 SCR for every 10 karma they receive; again, this SCR is added directly into the formula.  If the players have formed a solid team, you can use their averages of the above formula to get how much they're going to be paid.

If a character keeps being loud, they're going to get paid less than standard; if that 'being loud' was at the direction of the Johnson, on the other hand, you might consider balancing out the Public Awareness penalty you gave them with a Street Cred bonus, for doing the job just the way the ohnson wanted it.  This will penalize people who mess up immediately after the run in which they mess up, and it may take them a few runs toeing the line to get that back; unless they're consistently loud and obnoxious, however, their rewards should slowly creep upwards as they gain in competence until they're getting paid two, three, four times the standard amount.
A sideline thought, in regards to making extra cash via 'Brokerage X': must possess Street Credit - Notoriety - Public Awareness of 5 or more in order to be contacted.  (Or whatever minimum you, as GM, decide.)  Loyalty is never more than 1; Connection is never more than 4.  Monthly earnings are equal to [2d6 + (2/3 * Average Karma Earned on the Month) - 3 ] / 200.  This, multiplied by their current investment, is the amount gained for the month.  Yes, this means that if you don't go on runs and call them up to tell them what's going on so that they can, you know, do insider trading, you don't earn as much, and may in fact lose money.  Additional modifiers as per Loose Alliances can be added directly (not multiplied by 2) to the above formula before dividing by 200.

Note that this really can be an incredible rate of return, since it compounds every month, doubling an investment within three years.  This really is fantastic, and if a smart runner adds 75-90% of their ill-gotten gains, it will go up fast.

[8-bit]

That formula is pretty cool Ouroboros, but I have one question. How do you handle a starting character who has Notoriety? It is possible, as according to page 372 of SR5, your starting notoriety is modified by the following qualities.

Positive Qualities: Blandness, First Impression, Lucky

Negative Qualities: Addiction, Bad Luck, Combat Paralysis, Elf Poser, Gremlins, Incompetent (any skill),Ork Poser, Scorched, SINner (criminal SIN only), Spirit Bane, Uncouth, Uneducated, Weak Immune System

For each positive quality reduce Notoriety by one, for each negative quality increase Notoriety by one. I'm sure a few other qualities such as Combat Junkie from Run and Gun would apply here too. This means someone can have a multiplier of 0 or a negative number when using your formula. The GM is of course allowed to ignore this, but I'm curious as to how you would handle it.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

No offense, but I would smack the shit out of anyone who took ten or more Negative Qualities that impacted their Notoriety, then send them back to the drawing board and tell them to not be a moron.

Even good runners can go into the 'negative total' - meaning they start getting .9, .8, .7 or less as a multiplier.  You can work your way out of this, of course, but if you actually hit 0.0, congrats - you've been burned, nobody will talk to you, nobody will hire you except for a fifty-nuyen drive-by hit.  You're a has-been, a failure.  Go out in a blaze of glory, man.

[8-bit]

I think we have a bit of a misunderstanding, I wasn't saying take 10 qualities that affect Notoriety, I was just saying that any one of those gives you 1 point of Notoriety. I was asking that a character who starts with 1 Notoriety and not Street Cred, how would you handle the multiplier? You could theoretically start with 2 or even 3 Notoriety, but that's probably inadvisable. By your formula, that would be 1 + [(0 - 1 - 0) / 10 ] = Runner Value. As you have clarified, you would start at 0.9 for the multiplier then, which is all I was curious about.

[Namikaze]

I actually use a very similar "system" to Wyrm's - though it's not really hard-and-fast so much as it works fine for my purposes.  I use the total karma earned to determine the runner team's quality.  As they earn karma, usually on the scale of 10 or 20 karma (that's 1 or 2 Street Cred, by the way) I bump the nuyen up a multiplier.  And just to keep the whole thing from being too static, I have a variable that I throw in as well, usually a variance of up to 10% of the base wages, not counting any negotiation successes that the players get.

So if you took my system and put it into Wyrm's formula, you end up with this:

Total Karma / 10 = Multiplier

It's far from elegant, but it basically means that every three or four runs (barring the big-karma runs like Splintered State) the players get another 3,000¥ tacked on to their normal wages.