[halflingmage]

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. 

[All4BigGuns]

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!

●●●●

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).

[Dal Thrax]

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.     

[Raizer13]

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)

[Wakshaani]

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.

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

[Jayde Moon]

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.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

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.

[Mr. Black]

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?

[iduno]

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?

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

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.

[Reaver]

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...)

[All4BigGuns]

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.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

"Speedy", of course, also being a matter of discussion between you and your players.

[Marcus]

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.

[Whiskeyjack]

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.