[Ricochet]

My finished our first mission (not counting going back and playing a bunch of season 1 stuff to get a feel for the style of missions), and we wanted make sure we are reading the FAQ and past threads correctly on what is allowed and not allowed when it comes to looting.

Fencing - This part is pretty clear.  10% for illegal gear, 30% for legal gear.
However, at the end of the adventure, do you track the individual pieces of gear and mark them sold, or do you track the total money (10%) for the looted gear?  (A paperwork question more than a how do we do it in game question.)

The question was more about keeping stuff, and if there were any "artificial" limits to looting outside of not looting cyberware.

1)Can you keep any gear you find?  (Guns?  Armor? Foci? Comlinks?  Decks?)
2) Can you loot a dead player?

On acquiring gear between sessions:
1) It says 1 item can be acquired per week.  If we were playing sessions each Saturday, does that fulfill the week, or do we have to wait for a week with no runs ( week we don't play in) in order to acquire gear (or train a skill for that matter.)
2) It says Beta and Delta gear aren't available except in certain missions.  How much does this come up?  Should our Sam just forget about anything higher than Alpha and spend, or is it worth saving up for when that opportunity for high end gear comes up?

Thanks for any help letting me know what to do with this pile of guns (That are all better than my Ares Light Fire 70.)

[StarManta]

Looting: yep. Generally, you just write down the gear you acquire as you acquire it, figure out who wants what, then sell the remainder for 10%.

Dead players: It doesn't actually come up, in practice. Demo agents are pretty much told not to kill player characters unless the player goes way out of their way to die (SR:M is fundamentally marketing, and it leaves a bad impression to die in a demo game.) If it happens, though... I don't see why looting would be a problem.

When it says "1 item per week", that's in-game time, and has nothing whatsoever to do with what day or how often your game sessions come up. (You should be keeping a Missions calendar for your character.) Keep in mind that many Missions players have no local regular game, and get in 40+ hours of SR:M in a convention weekend.

[Ricochet]

I think our group is missing the point of the mission calendar and what a free week is.

What is really the point of the mission calendar?  In my case, I guess we need to try and keep the whole group aligned to the same calendar.  (IE 4 weeks took place between missions, everyone fill out 4 weeks of calendar.)  However, as soon as I pick up and go to a con, I will be sitting at a table with people on totally different calendars who might take 6 weeks since last mission for one, and another who is on his third mission this week.)

Is the whole purpose just to track lifestyle costs?

[Bull]

1. There are some changes to looting and selling.  Wait until the FAQ comes out. (Which will HOPEFULLY be soon.  It's sitting waiting on approval and layout). 

2.  Calender:  Partially to track lifestyle costs, and partly to track how long it takes to train, get gear, etc.  Again, for Season 5, tehre have been changes, so wait for the FAQ.  I know, sorry.

And each character is on a personal game calender.  You don't need to synchronize it.  Your character may have spent 34 weeks of game time doing runs and stuff, while someone else who's played the exact same games may only be on week 16.  It's primarily for record keeping and because paying your lifestyle and rent and such is an important thing to keep up with   Espeically if you want to start living the good (High) life.  Or even the Middle life.

[Ricochet]

Thanks for responding even if you can't tell too much yet.  I guess we'll packup up the pile of guns and the focus and put them in a box for a while until we know if we can use or sell them.  No deaths in the party during our first mission (although there was a close call from a big giant furry humanoid that took us by surprise.)

Since the calendar is more about paying lifestyles...how do lifestyles actually affect a character?  (And we have some group lifestyles in our group, so syncronizing actually seems like it would by important, unless that isn't legal.)

[Bull]

Well, since you're playing at home, my main question for you would be...  Are you looking to play Missions outside your home group?  if not, you don't really have to worry about the fiddly Missions rules, and can just treat it as a normal home campaign.  If so, well, then you need to follow the Missions FAQ stuff, yeah.

And group lifestyles are allowed, and in that case everyone who's on the same lifestyle has to "sync" up.  But if you have 2 or 3 small "groups" who are living together (Player A & B in on apartment, Player C, D, and E in another, for example), each group can be on their own calendar track.

[Ricochet]

We are actually, planning to finish Sprawl Wilds and SRM5-1 (if it's out) one per week leading to GenCon, before a couple of us are heading to GenCon.  Then we will have to figure out our next steps after GenCon since we aren't sure any other more missions will be available for Season 5 at that point.  (Although we know 1-6 have to be playable in some form by that weekend, doubt they will be formatted for pdf.)

[Vertigo916 "Patches"]

Im still kicking my self for not picking up Sprawl Wild at Origins.. At the time i thought it was a 4th ed book only lol.

[Tacitus05]

Hey Bull, any idea how contacts can help get you gear in Fifth Mission? They do seem to be a lot better at it then the players can ever be (unless your a face), since connection bonus is a big deal.
Might I add a suggestion to simulate characters having "connections"? Dice pool for gear finding gets a bonus equal to rep..thought I would throw that out there.

[Michael Chandra]

I should note there that the rules state Connection adds dice in one place, and adds Social Limit in another place, so we don't know yet what the actual version will/should be. Still, not sure what the problem is with asking a Contact to score you gear, since they no longer seem to charge a big fee?

[Ricochet]

We just took all our loot (and cash) and stuck it in a box after our first session, since we aren't sure what we are allowed to keep, what we are allowed to sell, and what should go poof.  We plan to do the same after tonight's session.  Fortunately, we have plenty of ammo, so we haven't had to try to buy any replacements yet.  Our rigger is down two drones though.  Started with enough that she's not hurting there yet though.  (Less drones were probably better for her anyway, too many running on dog brains for security/patrol duty is what got two killed in the first place.)

If the FAQ isn't up by GenCon, I might have to track down Bull, and say, "Here is our box of gear, what is legal to keep or sell?  20% of it is mine."

[KraakenDazs]

So i'm doing a bit of forum necromancy here, bringing up this post, but i've been searching around the boards and i have a couple questions pertaining to missions.

1) Am i right in assuming that the 10/30% rate has been replaced by the SR5 book's fencing rule as per the FAQ, where legality and illegality makes little difference as long as there's an availability rating? Basically, i could use a non-mission specific fence contact to resell our stuff, at the standard rate? Being the party face, i could probably get more than the flat 5%/ loyalty rate on my own, but i assume that's out of the question in the interest of fairness, and thats quite fine.

2) So i know the general gist is usually not to go around looting, or going the extra mile to get our hands on extremely powerful stuff, (like not blowing out a few hours of the run to go to a Mitsubishi dealer and steal the latest Nightsky model), but whats the general consensus on stuff thrown ''Sort-of'' our way? Suppose i (or a teammate) wants to loot a bad guy's bike (that's conveniently listed in his stats in the mission), and using Hardware+Logic, i change the ownership, and the decker handles and jams any localization device (in case the owner wants it back. Or his next of kin, har har.), is that overdoing it? Daddy wants a new Harley Scorpion, or three (Provided our team has the ''free time'' necessary to plunder a bit--our GM has a knack for cutting our scavenging short if we goof off too long. Grab watcha can ,no problem, but do it before KE and LS show up! )

3)What about reselling bad guy's cyberware, or looting it for our own purposes and installing it on ourselves? The FAQ has rules for the whole ''sell your old ware'' , and i'm guessing most GMs, including ours, would deem most cyberware too damaged after a firefight to recover it, but sometimes taking a few called shot to avoid hitting that sweet cyberlimb the street sam's eyeing is worth it, and with the right contacts (chop shop docs and fences), window of opportunity and means of transport , i'd assume we might make away with some of the graverobbing-plunder. (Is there even a rule on prices for installing cyberware, like a flat rate to put it in, or do street docs do it pro bono as long as you have the stuff on hand anyway--) 

I know it's a bunch of powergaming questions, but while i utterly love the shadowrun universe and i know its not exactly the same type of game speed, my player friends and acquaintances have always been the DnD powergaming types, opening beasts stomachs to plunder for gems, so i know stuff like this will come up, even if we try and fight some of those urges most of the time, or if GM intervention inhibits our ability to do so most of the time (and that's a good thing, to be honest ) . I'm considering, and hoping, to get a serious group into this Season's Missions, not just home-gaming it, and i want to be as by-the-book as possible, so i figured i'd ask how most people handle it.

[Michael Chandra]

GM definitely can cut the looting short. As for selling ware, the GM definitely should try to avoid making that possible. I would like an official stance of course, since with ware being more expensive a single enemy can easily be worth >5k per runner. Which definitely goes against the idea that there shouldn't be too big a difference between runners that did the same job.

As for installing it in yourself: That'd make it Used, you definitely want to avoid that. But yes, if you're insisting on doing that, we probably want a price. Normally surgery costs are included in the price, so if there is no price...

((I ended up blowing up a 345k deck in Dragon's Song 3 to avoid the players getting their hands on it. In DS2+3 the players earned 30k each from the jobs, 4.5k so 15% from loot fencing and would have earned 35k more if it hadn't been for me and them blowing stuff up. It's definitely toeing the line there, it's real easy to slip up as GM.))

[KraakenDazs]

As for installing it in yourself: That'd make it Used, you definitely want to avoid that.

To which the street sam replied swiftly:

''Second-hand Muscle toner still is more essence friendly than normal grade muscle reps, and 31 k nuyens cheaper ''

lol... i'll be bringing advils to my Mission GMs...

Also..ouch. It'd be a sad day, losing a 345k deck to explosions. But its a good analogy for the cyberware these days, and a good example of items to be wary about dropping into mission games.

[Michael Chandra]

Possible argument: "Bioware requires a living body to keep working, the killing damaged it and it no longer is usable."