[Galgano]

I’m tinkering with stuff in 5e right now, but this question applies to all editions I guess. How much of a reward should players receive after a run? Is there a table out there somewhere (i.e. wetwork is 25,000 nuyen, smash n grab is 20,000, etc.)? I ask because I’ve only played a few one shots so far. One in fourth edition and one in fifth I think. It was a long time ago. In any case, the second game had an inexperienced DM and a really hardcore powergamer that kinda ruined the experience for the rest of us. He didn’t do anything bad per se, but he did sorta bully the Johnson (and by extension the DM) into basically a blank check for the run. Just to be clear, he wasn’t aggressive or confrontational in real life. He was the face for the group and basically said the group wouldn’t do the run until the Johnson raised the reward higher. We got the reward raised to what I felt was a ridiculous sum of nuyen for the level of difficulty for the run (it was something simple like go here and steal this one item from this low security building) plus ANY cyberware/bioware/gear installed for free. All this without having to do a roll for it. Granted the blame does somewhat fall on the DM for not putting his foot down, but all of us with the exception of the face player were new to the game, so I place more blame on the experienced player for not lowering his level of play to the group’s.

Anyway that’s neither here nor there, and not the topic of this post. I’ll end up ranting about the whole thing at this rate. What I mostly want to know is what level of reward is standard for various types of runs? Does it depend on the DM and players/level of play? Or is there a list in a DM’s guide book that says what kind of rewards are suitable for certain types of missions?

[Michael Chandra]

In SR5 CRB, there are some guidelines based on difficulty and other factors (coldhearted vs feel-good, does it involve known risk multipliers such as getting involved with bigshots, etc). They work well for 1-run-per-month advancing campaigns in my opinion.

There are some fixed bounty-incomes (e.g. a dead wendigo), which you can take into account as a GM in the rewards for example. And a high-loot run might pay less instead, etc, etc.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Well, a few things to unpack there!

1) "Pay us more or we'll walk!"
The GM could have, and I daresay should have, had Mr J tell your team to walk, then.  On a meta level, Mr Js exist to give player characters their jobs and pay them for doing so... but in a proper roleplaying game even the Non-player characters have motivations and lives away from what the PCs are doing.  Megacorps have in effect unlimited money, sure.  But Mr Js do not... they have to use untraceable slush funds to pay criminals with and if one team is being unreasonable about their fees, then Mr J will find ANOTHER team of shadowrunners who'll do the job for his price. 

Furthermore, Mr Js are a tight-knit community.  Even when they're officers of rival corporations, they're all a member of a brotherhood of extreme professional courtesy.  For the collective good.  And once you piss off ONE Mr J, the others have a way of finding out you're untrustworthy hires.  Tell an Ares Mr J you won't work for his lousy pay, and that Mr J will tell his shadowy colleagues in other corps that you're "more trouble than you're worth" and then once NO Mr Js want to hire you, you're fragged as a shadowrunner.  Your GM can represent this by assigning Notoriety (or the analogous Reputation, in 6e) and/or causing Mr J contacts lose loyalty with you.  maybe even losing the contact entirely.

2) Player badgering a newbie GM:  Out-of-character conflicts are harder to deal with than in-character ones.  There's only one remedy: you have to face it head on and tell the offender that the behavior needs to stop.  And it's not the GM's sole responsibility to do this.

3) So how much SHOULD you get paid?
The answer absolutely depends on the feel and style of the campaign.  Maybe in one campaign you're THE only (or at least the very best) shadowrunning team in the whole city, and you can essentially command your fees. Maybe you're a campaign of "Mystery Men" style wannabees who are just starting at shadowrunning, and lucky to get any job offer whatsoever, even at miserable compensation.  Most campaigns will be somewhere in between.  A couple of yardsticks:  Shadowrun Missions, the official organized play campaign, pays roughly 10,000 nuyen per team member.  Of course, that's necessarily unrealistic as the more players who show up, the bigger the payout is and that's not at all how Mr J would work "in universe"... but meta is meta.  It doesn't do to encourage players telling ppl to go away or kill each other for the share of the bigger payout in organized play     Another way to measure how much you should be paid for a given campaign is to consider 1) at what lifestyle should successful shadowrunners live and 2) how many runs per month do they need to perform to meet that lifestyle expense.  Again, in organized play the assumption is most shadowrunners live at low or medium lifestyle, and have to go on at least 2 runs per month to make ends meet.

4) how should payment work?
There is no objectively correct answer.   And indeed, having different Mr Js prefer to pay and negotiate in different ways helps give a sense of realism to the game.  Maybe this Johnson pays a lot, but doesn't give anything up front.  Maybe another one never increases the total payment, but offers hard-to-acquire gear or services as additional payment.  Maybe the runners are in a tough spot and a Johnson is able to hold them over a barrel and extort them into working for free, or for very little compensation.

In a sandbox style campaign, maybe there is no Johnson and the runners are giving themselves their own jobs.  Heists, robin hood do-goodery, revenge, etc.  While noone is paying them per se, maybe the compensation for the run comes entirely from fencing ill-gotten items.  Or maybe the compensation isn't monetary at all... maybe the only way to get your hands on a GMC Banshee is to steal one.  So, that's your run!  Or, in the case of revenge or robin-hooding, the deed being done is compensation in of itself.  Gaining Contacts and/or increasing existing Contact loyalty is always an option as potential compensation for shadowrunners, especially in these kinds of cases.

[CanRay]

5¥ and a discount card for Stuffer Shack.

And they should fragging like it!   

[Reaver]

First off: How did you get so far into that minefield without stepping on a mine??   

There is a table on page 372 of the CRB that lists the suggested starting pay, and the modifiers to that base pay depending on how hard or easy the run is. (it also lists the potential Karma awards on a different table on the same page if you are interested.).
Keep in mind, the issue of payment is a controversial one. There are many people, for a variety of reasons, that feel the listed payments are too small... And some who feel they are too big!

For what its worth, I don't use the table on page 372 at all.... (but this is because I have been GMing for years and have my own system for assigning payments for runs.)

  If you are looking for a way to determine a run payment for your game, here are few things to consider:

1: How many runs a month are you expecting the Runners to do?
If you are expecting the Runners to be doing a run a week, then that would mean 4 payments a month... (or $12,000 before modifiers based on the table) If you are expecting a single run a month, then they are only making $3000...(before modifiers) Which can pose problems with just maintaining their gear! (lifestyle costs, used ammo and supplies, repairs/ etc)

2: Who are your characters? Are they street scum or High Rollers?
This matters a lot! NO ONE is offering $25,000 paydays to a bunch of nobodies. ON the other hand, a crew with as stellar reputation for perfect work, and a resume that spans years of action and hundreds of runs are not going to get out of bed for $500.

3: What does the run entail?
There is big different between "Rough up this salaryman and put the fear of God into him" and "break into the Neo-Net Zed zone and bring back the one of kind McGuffin that is worn around the CEO's neck"  The more planning, the more danger, the more heat a run can generate, the more the pay should reflect this... (NOTE: this is the base run... Character actions can always change the difficulty of a mission... If the players were to sneak in and get an item, but their idea of "sneak" is using an ATGM to blow open the doors and then run in with miniguns.... well no bonus pay for the heat they attracted!)

4: Who is paying for the run?
Not all jobs come from Johnsons with multi-billion dollar expense accounts. Some Johnsons are just regular people who need something done that is illegal (or at least immoral, or just "Grey")..  A Johnson that represents a low income Arkoblock  trying to get the Mob to leave them alone can't pay as much as a Johnson from Renraku. Also keep in mind that payments don't have to be in cash... They can be in just about anything... from stocks and shares to fresh fruit! Course, the runners would like cash... but that is just not an option all the time. (My character's crew got paid in Coffee beans once!)

5: What is the theme and atmosphere of your game?
This matters more then people think, as payments can throw the theme and mood of your campaign right out the window. IF you are trying to portray the world as a dark and gloomy dystopian where life is cheap and living is hard, handing out multi thousand dollar payments really works against the tone you've set.

6: how fast do you want your character to progress?
Money is Power in Shadowrun... Both thematically, and in the crunch of the game. When the money flows like water, so too does the reagents, foci, ammo, guns and ware... which can lead to a dramatic increase in the player power level relative to their karma and reputation. Which can lead to game imbalances right quickly (If you one of those that subscribe to "balance in all things" game philosophy) On the other side, if payments are not high enough, then the character start going backwards! If they can not cover their costs (assuming they are not morons and overspending) they can not really progress.



It can take a while as a GM to get a handle on payments, especially for a new GM. And the "correct" amount to pay is going to change just about every campaign and group of characters (as all campaigns and characters have different costs). My advice to you would be to start on the low end of payments and then slowly increase them as you become more comfortable. After all, its easier to slowly increase rewards to compensate for UNDER payments in the past than it is to compensate for OVER payments that could get you into trouble later on...

[MercilessMing]

Yeah this question is full of meta considerations.  How many players there are, how long and difficult the mission is, how many missions per month you set your game pace, what are the opportunities for side hustle.
On average I shoot for 2500 per player per session and two missions per month.  I expect most missions to take 2-4 sessions.  One target, regular legwork, 2 sessions.  One target regular legwork and a major complication, 3.  Two targets (bounty hunting, investigation, usually fall here) 4 sessions.
When the GM feels extorted by the players, the right call in the moment is for the J to walk away.  If the players are comfortable walking away, maybe the J is as well.  What do you do when that happens?  That sucks!  Dig into your characters' backstories... a contact calls asking for help, someone gets a lead on their missing brother, a player's car is stolen or impounded, and then you wing it. 
If the rent comes due right after a session where the runners bailed on a job, all the better.  It's the players' perogative to turn down a job, but there are consequences.

At the meeting, don't go into too many details about the job until the runners have agreed.  That way, you can reuse your mission if the players bail.
If you find yourself as a gamemaster on the bad end of a deal struck with the runners, there are ways out.  If a J has overpromised, maybe you decide it's because he was going to double cross the runners anyway.  Perhaps the corporation he works for replaces him, and the new Johnson and his team of "adjusters" want to renegotiate.
If however you realize you've seriously underpaid the players compared to the struggles they're having during the mission, look for loot options.  Hey that enemy mage had a focus.  That katana sticking out of your gut is a piece of art.  While snooping in the datastore you find info that would be in demand.  etc.

[Michael Chandra]

I managed to mostly-track my rewards for a while, left out the run synopsis but this was an SR5 campaign where players had already done about 20 runs in SR4 before we converted to SR5. We took 1 session per run, in-game runs were once a month. Here's the large variation of run rewards, where some involved really nasty and/or high-profile targets. Most rewards were based on SR5 suggestion rewards, including feel-good impacts occasionally.

#1: Party Favors
¥ 6.000
6 karma
Expenses paid

#2: Pest Control
¥ 22.000
6 karma

#3: Rat Race
¥ 7.000
8 karma

#4: Silver-tongued Devil
¥ 25.000
7 karma

#5: Beast of a Burden
¥ 25.000
8 karma

#6: Guns & Daughters
¥ 8.000
6 karma

#7: Spring Cleaning
¥ 15.500
6 karma

#8: Cops and Robbers
¥ 20.000
6 karma
Civilian Tac-Net, 1 part per runner

#9: Dogs of War
¥ 25.000
4 karma

#10: Eye Spy
¥ 17.500
9 karma

#11: Bullets For My Valentine
¥ 15.000 after expenses and fencing
8 karma

#12: Into The Jungle
¥ 28.500
8 karma

#13: Crystal Clear
¥ 14.000
8 karma

#14: Through The Needle
¥ 12.000
7 karma

#15: Deeper Underground
¥ 20.100 (after subtracting expenses)
7 karma

#16: All The Queen’s Men
¥ 2.000
7 karma

#17: Old Dogs & New Tricksters
¥ 15.120
8 karma

#18: Courtesy Call
¥ 12.750
5 karma

#19: A Kind Of Magic
¥ 14.000
6 karma
VIP tickets

#20: Working Man
¥ 18.000
9 karma

#21: Birds Of A Feather
¥ 14.000
8 karma

#22: Kill The Lights
¥ 18.000
7 karma

#23: Red Queen’s Race
¥ 23.333
6 karma

[Sphinx]

I like to award 1 karma and 1,000 nuyen per hour of game play as a starting value. Adjust the karma reward up or down based on how the players did (less for dithering and being generally ineffective; more for staying on task, good planning, and entertaining roleplay). Adjust the nuyen reward up or down based on the circumstances of the run, ensuring that they get a really good payday every fourth or fifth run to satisfy the players' desire for upgrades to their gear and augmentations.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

The 6e rulebook also suggests a meta approach based on real-world time spent play in the game, as well.

A the usual Shadowrun structure includes a potential pitfall, though: one of the first steps is the meet and fee negotiation with Mr. Johnson, so you don't know if the players are going to take 1 or 3 or even more sessions to complete the job!

However, that does have a silver lining... the players know the GM thinks this job should only take X hours or sessions to complete, and that meta knowledge can help them escape "planning paralysis" and confidently settle on a course of action