[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Not bad, Namikaze.  My 'run multiplier' comes into effect after the total is determined, while yours applies to the baseline - so we're actually on roughly the same scale.

[Namikaze]

Yeah, I figure that Notoriety and such factors into the negotiation rolls, so I think it all comes out in the wash. 

[emsquared]

I personally am not a fan of a formulaic approach like that. It may be handy to get an idea of what your end game is, or perfect for if the group is a corp-salaried team, but I want the different natures of different runs - and Johnson's - to be reflected in, and require, different pay rates. A scalar progression like that, drains some of the character from the setting, IMO. There's no IC quantification of these things, so paying out that way seems... I dunno, weird... too mechanical. I don't want my players to know how much they'll earn for the next gig, based on this linearly increasing amount they've gotten each time in the past.

I want booms and busts, drama, mystery.

Which isn't the handiest of advice, as it means you (newbie GM who happens to read this) have to figure some things out for yourself; there is no formula. Which is part of what I was trying to communicate in my OP. But really that's what this thread is about: Do you use THE formula? No, but I use A formula. ... I disagree, each Run, each campaign, each table and each GM should be different. It all deserves something specific.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

It's basically an assist to understanding the value of the runner and/or team.  I understand - believe me, I understand!! - wanting players to have to come to grips with different Johnsons' pay rates, how much different corporations are willing to pay, that sort of thing.  However, after you get 100, 200, 500 karma under your belt, after you've been through hell and back and have both the scars and the street cred to prove it, after you can slip into an MCT zero-zone without being spotted and then out again with your target without being spotted - when you can consistently perform without the target corporation ever knowing you were even there - a player and a character should expect to be worth more.  Fastjack isn't going to get hired to heist the plans for a prototype and get paid the same amount as New Jack in the City; New Jack is fresh on the scene, while Fastjack has a reputation for a) getting the job done, b) getting it done fast, and c) getting it done right.

And that skill and reputation should have a commesurate increase of payment.  Let me quote something from ol' Shadowland 6, back in the day:

>>>>>[ Have you ever seen some of their published adventures, and the sort of thing expected of a so-called "average" Shadowrunner?

Dude, I'm all for scraping the gutter cyberpunk, trust me. But when you reach a certain level of karma and nuyen, the game takes on a different feel. In D&D, for the first few levels, goblins are scary motherfuckers and a +1 dagger is a rare prize. But sooner or later, the GM has to up the ante, y'know?

That happens in every game. ]<<<<<
- Talondel (09:24:54/07-29-2064)

(Talondel is our own Critias, for what it's worth.)

The above is a handy measure for the GM to help gauge around what amount the runners should be paid.  If it helps, this should also help scale how dangerous the opposition is; nobody's going to pay 'Jack to grab the formula for a new stuffer from Podunk Brands, Ltd.  He'll be going after something nova-hot.  But if the PCs are getting paid 25k + 2k/net hit a head to snatch the top scientist in the field from an ultra-paranoid corporation - which is a 'run scaled to their capabilities - then the GM maybe needs to take another look at how much he's paying them.

Booms and busts, drama and mystery are great.  I entirely support it.  Johnson screws you over, or is very pleased and gives you a bonus credstick and a promise to contact you in the near future.  Or he sends you off to Fantasy Island both as a bonus and to help get you out of the way of irate locals.  But as I said - these formulas help the GM determine a ballpark value that the street and the corps put on the work of the runner.  Where you go from there is up to you, but I know Hawatari as of 2074 isn't going to take a piddly little 10k gig when she's worth ten times that amount, proven by her own ups and downs, successes and failures.

[emsquared]

I don't disagree (properly skilled/successful runners deserve proper pay), but the booms and busts can be street cred/skill-level appropriate too, and furthermore - at least at my table - not everything the characters do are going to be for pay, not everything they do and earn rewards for are runs. There's gonna be player and group goals that will require them to do things that they're not gonna get paid for (which is not to say that they can't find some way to make some money while doing it), no one's hiring them to do it, it just has to be done if they want X - but they're gonna get karma for it - so you may need to compensate with heavier cash down the line. Conversely, there will be certain lucrative things they could do (like investments) that could net them a lot of Y, but not a lot of karma. So that's why you (again, speaking to GMs who might find this thread for advice) need to have clear visions of player/group goals (financial, mechanical and story) and what will be required from your campaign and accompanying rewards for them to achieve that.

Not saying that you can't use your equation AND still keep things organic,. I don't disagree that it's a good guide for what your PCs may be "worth". All I'm doing is warding people away from only using a salary like pay scale equation.

[Glyph]

One of the biggest problem areas of the game, to me, is how utterly dependent some archetypes are on gear that is hard to get and monstrously expensive compared to what typical runner pay is.  I think a nice, gritty game would have more damage to augmentations, magical foci, or decks, but it wouldn't work out that well in practice.  It should be - go on a run, something gets shot up, you have to spend part of your pay to replace it.  It is - go on a run, getting paid a few thousand to risk your deck, which is worth hundreds of thousands.  If it gets shot up, then you might be better off making a brand new character, as opposed to having your current character functioning at a significantly reduced capacity for the scores of shadowruns that it will take to replace that deck.  If you are a mage and lose a focus, you are not quite as impaired, but are still out not only a lot of money, but a lot of karma.  And street samurai or riggers - it can be so hard for them to advance in a low-pay game, that you wonder how the heck they got their starting gear/augmentations in the first place.

[Ursus Maior]

If it gets shot up, then you might be better off making a brand new character, as opposed to having your current character functioning at a significantly reduced capacity for the scores of shadowruns that it will take to replace that deck.

nd street samurai or riggers - it can be so hard for them to advance in a low-pay game, that you wonder how the heck they got their starting gear/augmentations in the first place.

True and I always struggled with these two things as a gamemaster. I think it's my responsibility to come up with solutions (not only mine, but as well) to this problem, by giving the players plot hooks that can turn bad luck back into "at least it's not a complete loss". I think taking risks and leaving some things to chance/fate are part of the fun, but getting mauled and piling up debts all the time will nullify any fun a player has with his character. If you like suckerpunches, live real life. Playing SR in your free time is about having fun.

Last session (friday night's firefight) the group planned well and executed very promising. Then the Technomancer failed a role impersonating a contact of their target, tipping of the target and his crew. So everythin erupted into action. The rigger made a bad choice by hot-simming into his drone, instead of his car (the respective other was to shoot autonomous). The drone got shot to pieces, the rigger was hurt by biofeedback and the whole highway errupted into a full sized firefight between two fully fledged combat crews. The group prevailed, but not without loosing the drone and having to shoot plenty of (expensive) rounds, wrecking a lot of salvagable equipment, getting shot badly and leaving witnesses (one family in a car). Thank the heavens it was on route 70, 2:30 AM outside of Farwell (TX). Then came the contacts of the target in a rigged SUV. They almost geeked the group's mage (he'll be needing some downtime now), before being shred to pieces by hitting a barrier spell doing 120 kph.

The group accomplished most of their goals in the end, but not without some serious consequences. The initial mission was to bust a ring of human smugglers between CAS and PCC (in 2060). The group works for the DA of New Orleans and they were to secure "the cargo" after the deal went down and provide the DA with members of each party (to pin it on). Unknown to the group a corp was mingling with the buisiness (they have bad history of course) and the corp belongs to the DA's boss (governor of Louisiana). The only living witness of party B is working undercover for the corp. So now if they deliver the witness to the DA the corp will know everything: That the runners were behind the ops, that they cost them the cargo and that the DA is investigating a multinational case implying the governor into criminal activities.

Someone will have to geek the witness or the runners, both being bad for the group.

[emsquared]

Disparity in player aspirations/needs is a problem, but if you pace rewards to the highest player, everyone else will find something to do with the Y/karma, don't you worry. Maybe it's just luxury lifestyle maybe it's something sweet they didn't even know they needed. Alternately, find ways to provide the goal at an appropriate time, at an appropriate discount.

Riggers are easy. You know he wants that bleeding edge flyer, so maybe in a garage at the end of a run, voila, there it is. Maybe it's just the shell or maybe just the motor and mobo, but either away it just costs 60% of MSRP (and some mech checks?) to get it up and going.

Sammie's are only a little bit harder; a significant part of 'ware costs is the surgery to install them, find a way to work a very grateful doc or lab or even corp into the story who will do the surgery at cost to the facility, reduces the whole package to 75% MSRP.

Players love non traditional rewards like these, moves things away from the sterility of "here's your karma and cash, what's next?".

[Reaver]

I too use the formula in the book as a baseline, then modify the pay by the history of the runners/team. Do they have a rep for getting the job done right? More pay.

Also, every few runs I throw a "grab" bag their way... this being an exceptional pay out, fancy new toy, access to shiny cyberware.... what have you.

And of course, the opposite happens if they happen to be idiots (or a rep for being idiots..) Jobs dry up, fixers and johnsons don't return calls, and what work does come their way isn't well paying...

[Frankie the Fomori]

Two cents from this peanut gallery, after reading cybermancy and the story about the Street Sam and his move into more and more ware it got me thinking...runners have to do allot of shit all the time to further push there careers and reputation. My group may play 1-3 times per month and then Go for whole months of nothing, as they say life happens. But even if we run once a month the pay is maybe equal for the job but not growth or lifestyle. So what I am starting to do is creating a concept that will allow the players runners to have there busy shadow lives and gain some reward from it while still keeping the game alive. Not sure about actual amounts yet but looking at examples like "street Sam took 3 jobs this month a bodyguard, helped move street Doc's high end import(illegal) goods from Salish boarder to barrens, part of assault team that hit a prostitution ring that was snipping woman from his former gangs turf, etc" this could bet him 2100 for bodyguard, 500 plus 10% discount on ware from street doc and maybe 1500 from grateful former gang boss.

This combined with 8-15K he gets from that months run map his progress towards Aplha cyber eyes a possible thing in a week, if I plan the events the. Him saving up over time could bet him a great discount on some expensive ware.

Other things I do is rule that archetypes get reduced costs associated with gear expense. Our rigger is one badass for finding exactly all the parts he needed for his damaged drone to get it working....no punishment, just awesome concept of his scrounging ability and allowing him to not sweet bad die roles.....now if he decided to waste his drones on some poor thought out an completely useless plan then he does not get such a great break. All archetypes are treated with this....upkeep is not handled out of take home pay, it is part of the deals that they interact with during there off shadowrun time, I give them a brief email to describe what they have been up to and then I square the bill(s)

[Ursus Maior]

My problem with the payment formula from the core book is that it is tied to the game values of the opponents. That would mean Mr Johnson has really good intel and is very transparent about it. In the (not too large) shadow community such a rigid formula would mean that everyone can guess how difficult Mr Johnson's intel conceptualizes the run. The formula however raises payment linear to the highest opposing dice pool, that is a problem since the difficulty of opponents grows proportionally to the growth of their dice pools. A low thug with a professional rating of 1 to 3 has little expierence, few contacts and only little augmentations. Someone with professional rating 4 to 6 has been around far longer, might thus have top contacts and is possibly highly augmented. Also, while his highest dice pool actually used against the group (e.g. firearms, hacking etc.) just adds little to the payment, his many other dice pools that - though lower and thus not adding money - advance combat value, also make him considerably more dangerous. A street sam with a firearms pool of 11 and two fellows with pools of 8-10 is fairly common and can be disposed off by a good team in one round. A street sam with a firearms pool of 12, two fellows with pools of 11 and all three having pools in small unit tactics of 10 are considerably more dangerous than the 0.25 modifier would suggest.

[Grinder]

Tell me, please, how strictly do you follow rulebook's guidelines about cash rewards?

Not at all.