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Rewards too big or too small? Alphaware adventures.

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mcv

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« on: <12-14-18/0611:19> »
My impression as a newbie GM for Shadowrun is that the size of rewards is a recurring topic, but I just noticed something I hadn't encountered before.

I'd head that most people consider the rewards in Splintered State outrageously excessive, and they definitely are. I've also head that a lot of people consider the suggested rewards from the core rulebook for SR5 (3000 nuyen per runner) to be rather stingy.

What I haven't heard anyone about, is the scale of rewards in the Alphaware Plots & Paydata adventures. These are all fairly simple adventures, with rewards ranging from nothing (Food Fight) to I believe 3000 per runner in some of the middle adventures, but the last two pay a whopping 30-50k and 100k. For adventures that are small and not that hard.

Is that not also excessive? One is breaking into a small corporate facility with little on-site security and stealing something small, the other is abducting someone from a not very secure apartment. What would be reasonable rewards for missions like that?

Michael Chandra

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« Reply #1 on: <12-15-18/0223:50> »
I'd suggest looking at the normal suggestion system in Core and see what the runs would be according to those guidelines. Then like half the nuyen for really quick ones, and consider raising it relatively for really complicated things.

Iirc, if you just abduct someone you likely face what, dicepool <12, no real big dangers? That'd be a 9k-base, ~10.5k after really good negotiation, in the base system. If it's a simplistic run of maybe 3 scenes instead of 6, make it 5k?

You could even have some adventures PROMISE the original amount but due to circumstances/liars it becomes the new one...
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Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #2 on: <12-15-18/1054:19> »
Depending on how much time and energy the GM is willing to devote to it, shadowrunners can make a significant profit on selling things incidentally looted/stolen/captured during their shadowrun.  Maybe even more than what you got paid by Mr. Johnson.  Things like combat cyberware and security vehicles can make you good nuyen, even at a fraction of their list price.  But it requires finding buyers, not being betrayed by those buyers, not being pinched by the Law the entire time, dealing with the notoriety and/or public awareness for hawking looted gear, etc.  The 'adventure' in selling such hot gear can be more involved and lengthier than the shadowrun was itself...
« Last Edit: <12-15-18/1056:34> by Stainless Steel Devil Rat »
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Marcus

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« Reply #3 on: <12-15-18/1106:16> »
You have to keep in mind not all tables are the same and not all game concept call for the same reward.
You got a table that's primarily magic?  Well money lot less then. you got a strong tech table? Are you running street level? Are you running Prime Level? Upgrades are really expensive and require a lot of logistics. 10-13k a run, pays life style and Ammo, sure you might get couple runs a months, and you might not. So you need look what works for your table. A decent story arc conclusion that pays something 50k-100k, is probably about right, that kinda money means an upgrade or two  Tech players, some foci or workshop to magic tables, or make a larger pile of Karma and keep the cash lower.

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mcv

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« Reply #4 on: <12-17-18/0356:20> »
My table has 3 runners (maybe that will become 4 later), with one street sam, one decker/street sam, and one magician (he had an adept first, but decided we needed some magic).

I don't want to be too stingy with money, I also don't want to swamp them in it to the extent that they will quickly feel smaller runs aren't worth their time. I fear being too stingy will make the magician too powerful compared to the others, and I'd like them to be able to afford some extra gear, like a better car or something.

But I also fear giving too much money too early on will make them not appreciate smaller rewards later. I don't want to put their expectations too high.

SunRunner

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« Reply #5 on: <12-22-18/2138:33> »
1st things 1st you gotta figure out what level adventure your running. Is it street level ganger work or are you playing in the big leagues doing mission impossible runs to get into the Aztec arcology secure clean room to extratract a new chip prototype? For street level 3 to 5k a run is pretty good, for the Clean room heist it wont even cover the bribes/long cons needed to get in the door let alone anything you need for the run. That level means each runner on the team is expecting to score 50k to 100k each and that's after they cover operating expenses. A good rule of thumb is to go over your teams lifestyle costs, this will set what you need to feed them as a base line. Then look at their ware and such and figure out how much money they would need to get an upgrade and figure how long you think that should take assuming they are clearing runs and not screwing them up. You start talking about upgrading a R3 wired reflexes from normal to Alpha your sam needs 260k just to pay for it, but he really needs more then that because hes gonna spend at least 2 or 3 weeks getting the work done and then recovering so basically a month of down time so tack on his lifestyle costs. If you expect him to be able to do that after say 6 runs then that means he needs to clear 270k/6 = 43.3 k per run just as an example. This is generally something the GM and players need to talk about to see how long they expect to go between upgrades for both ware and skills. Same thing happens on the karma side when the street same wants to up his automatics from 6 to 7 or increase a stat like his body.

As for Awakened vs Mundane runners, I tend to keep the karma and nuyen relatively balanced and let the players sort that out for themselves with Cash to Karma and Karma to cash converting. You will drive yourself insane otherwise as the players will pinball between cash hungry and karma hungry all the time. Mundanes tend to want tech and ware so they like cash more but that will change soon as the want to increase some skills and stats. Awakened tend to want more karma since that makes magic go, but eventually they need another focus or a Car or a vault of the ages and other magi tech toys and suddenly a giant pile of karma wont solve their problems.