[Rift_0f_Bladz]

Even with your numbers Herr Brackhaus, 1.2k per car is decent. And how many cars do you think decent car jackers can take a night, let's say 4, one per person, cause anyone can drive. That is 4.8k a night. Or even one car a night 3 times a week is still 3.6k a week. How often do your runners go on runs in a week? A month. Yes, those should be guide lines in the CRB, but for many case they are to low. With that I am done.

[Emperors Grace]

If 12 cars per week disappear in a neighborhood, you can expect local (and official) protectors to notice and start diverting resources...

How long is that 12 cars per week sustainable before you need to move to better areas with better protection? 

How much can the chop shop actually sell in parts without official investigation as to source given the recent rise in thefts?  (I can't see places buying lots of hot parts if the KE are asking around heavily.)

Branching out into other neighborhoods can yield more interested parties and even turf wars.

I think even if they intended on avoiding runs, they'd end up on runs anyway to try to solve such issues.

[Csjarrat]

you don't sell em locally if you're pulling that shit. you steal them to-order and have them on a container ship heading overseas by midnight.
once that's done you bail and head to another city.
That's how I would do it anyway...Not that i do or anything. Honest!
Looks around suspiciously....

[Reaver]

you don't sell em locally if you're pulling that shit. you steal them to-order and have them on a container ship heading overseas by midnight.
once that's done you bail and head to another city.
That's how I would do it anyway...Not that i do or anything. Honest!
Looks around suspiciously....

which is a lot different then "boosting 4 cars a night 4 nights a week" crap.

What you are talking about is leg work. Lots and lots of leg work.

First you have to find your international buyers.
Then you have to locate the cars that THEY want.
Then you have to steal said cars.
THEN, you have to get them to the location of transport. (which, if international means a harbour, or airport) and over come their security to get your stolen goods just in the door,
THEN, you have to load and ship....




Yep sounds like a shadowrun to me... and all for what? 25% for the value (if you are exceedingly lucky... as everyone involved in this venture, and you are talking about DOZENS of people that all want their cut....


And what happens when your shipment sinks? Or goes down in a ball of flames? Or Interpol catches it? Or a rival organization takes it? I somehow doubt those sponsors are going to say "Hey, yea, we didn't get our merchandise, but you go a head and keep that money from our missing goods that we have no idea if you ratted out on or not..."

[Herr Brackhaus]

Gone In 60 Seconds, 2075 Edition. Actually sounds like it could be good fun.

[brasso]

Gone In 60 Seconds, 2075 Edition. Actually sounds like it could be good fun.

Was thinking the same thing! It started as a one-off job, just to make ends meet...

There was actually a documentary on this a while back, and they were all going to foreign countries in containers. There'd be plenty of work to keep the whole team busy - decker for licensing and shipping manifests, face for making the deals, sammy and the mage for muscle. And the rigger? Well...

Although I guess we are getting a little off topic...   

[MijRai]

Y'all are forgetting that places like Seattle don't need to ship the vehicles that far; the Salish-Shidhe Council surrounds the city, and it's a different nation.  Europe and parts of Asia have a lot of close borders that don't require long-distance travel to avoid authorities. 

[halflingmage]

I will weigh in on the whole stealing cars for a living thing.  It is something to keep in mind that characters have other options than just waiting around for someone to hire them.  Hijacking, car theft, simple burglaries in middle class neighborhoods are all things that a team capable of hitting a secure corporate lab and getting out alive should be able to handle in their sleep.  And they are a darned bit safer.  You don't want to have the players so rich that they stop taking runs and are turning down business, but at the same time if the pay is crap and the johnson always double crosses you, there are other ways to turn a nuyen as a criminal.

I have no idea how much a real world car thief gets paid for a given car.  But i can tell you it is a thriving business.  The 'gone in 60 seconds" bit is a nice movie, but its not the way it works.  You don't go after ultra expensive cars then then ship them out of the country.  You steal popular middle class cars a few years old.  Why?  There is a huge market for parts.  Stolen cars don't get resold as complete cars, they get turned into parts and sold under the table to mechanics who buy on the cheap and charge the price for a part from the factory.  A good decker or a rigger with hardware and locksmith could burn through such vehicles like wildfire.  If you have both the car is unlocked, powered up, and off of grid guide before the wheelman opens the door.  To anyone else around it looks like a normal keyless entry. In a world where your toothbrush has wireless no one would bat an eye.

[Glyph]

A lot of it depends on the play style and character creations of the players.  Some players might like cunning plans, while others might be stymied by a locked door that can't be kicked down.  Character creation can make characters all up and down the scale when it comes to experience and ability.  I think a shadowrunning team that is actually capable of doing runs against corporate compounds should get paid commensurately, but a lot of "runners" might merely be small-time criminals.

[farothel]

And a lot of criminals call themselves runners so they don't have to call themselves criminals.  Just like a lot of terrorists call themselves freedom fighters.

[Leevizer]

Hey, what about coffin motels and the other possible options with a squatter lifestyle, like, say, renting a garage space? I find both of those to be quite interesting alternatives (which might even work!) Compared to the hobo-lifestyle. If you don't have any possessions other than what you can fit in a bag, a coffin motel is actually a viable lifestyle for you. Even if you have a bit more gear but you sleep with it, there shouldn't be much problem (as long as the cubes aren't, you know, actively in use by others or have actual manned staff who might get upset at you sleeping with your AK-97.

But when thinking of other possibilities such as the garage, it has it's own perks, too. First off, it has a door with a lock (and the player can be encouraged to buy a better one by himself), and lots of storage space. I'd be aghast if in God's year 207X you couldn't manage to cook food, sleep and maybe have a bio-toilet in that place. A shower might be harder, though I could see it happening, provided there'd be a drain in the room... Mainly why this would be a squatter instead of a low lifestyle would be that it isn't an apartment, it's a single room. And even if the player CAN live there, it's a hassle and he shouldn't. For example by saying that he needs to shower and bath somewhere...

And after all this I present to you: The GarageCube lifestly (1000 nuyen a month). You rent yourself a garage for holding your gear, privacy and the ability to cook food with your portable cooker and a Cube from a coffin motel nearby, allowing you to stay sanitary, use a toilet and sleep there too, if you want!

...And we shouldn't forget Cyberpunk 2020's "life is disposable" attitude either.

[farothel]

I knew a player who had bought a truck/trailer combo and in the trailer she had managed to put a cozy appartment.  You can park wherever you want (every day another location if you're really that paranoid) and you have quite a bit of room in the trailer as well and you can install a bit of security yourself.

[Froggy711]

I think descriptive disincentives can be pretty motivating.

You're asleep. And wet. This is, in and of itself, isn't surprising. You have spent countless nights just like this one, curled up beneath a trash-heap in an alley, cradling your commlink, dreaming of all of 100,000 nuyen you have saved. You slip into a dream about how stupid your comrades must feel, spending their hard earned nuyen on things like beds fancy trid movies and showers... showers... a shower would be really good about now.

You imagine yourself taking a shower. the warm hot water, running over you, your muscles relax. Yeah. Showers are just as good in your dreams as they are in real life. Yeah. The clean smell of the shower. You breathe it in... but the smell of sour meat, rotting garbage and piss assaults your nose. Piss. That's a new one, You didn't remember that smell when you went to sleep.

You open your eyes and look up. A bleary eyed elf is standing over you, oblivious. The bottle of cheap liquor in his hand and his staggering stance suggests that he has just spent the greater part of the night in the bar across the way, and has chosen to use your alley as his own personal restroom. And chummer, I'm sorry to say that you are the toilet. What do you do?

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Nicely written.  And a good example of the Street Lifestyle.

[Namikaze]

Oh that is very nicely written.  Fortunately for me, my players don't want anything to do with being hobos.  Even if they're sitting on a credstick with 100,000¥ on it, they'll refuse to sleep in an alley.