[Rigger_Joe]

I currently have a group of 5 players that have been playing for around a year. I started as a player myself but the starting GM quickly burned out after 3 months and so I took over.
Character Creation had been a 500 BP as per the starting GMs wishes and the party were fairly powerful but was manageable. The old GM became a player and made a mage at a 550BP to make up for the power difference. Inexperienced to 4th Edition I let it slide.

I ran the group through 2 official missions (Dusk & Midnight) plus a couple of homemade missions which challenged the group and they managed to gear up a little more. At this point because of both Karma XP and the original 500BP they were really becoming quite powerful. The original GM then asked to take over again as he had a big mission he wanted to run that would take a couple of months and gave me a chance to play again.

The few months have passed and now the game has been handed back to me to run again. However, at the end of the last mission, the GM gave all the players a pile of Karma and $1.5M (each). So, after one year of play and only about 7 missions the players are maxed with cyber/bio ware (fair bit of Delta as GM allowed it), have permanent lifestyles and stats out of the whazoo. The GM bought his mage back and had given himself downtime Karma and had become an Intiate 3 with a God awefully powerful spirit (which in fairness, could have killed him in the binding if I had rolled better).

So now I have all players at 4 IP, everything they could possibly want / fit and most fights are technically over in under 9 secs. I have nothing I can really offer them as a rewards and they really have no motivation except to take more jobs. I personally feel that they have missed the best part of Shadowrun which is starting low and scrapping themselves up into the bigwigs and scrapping and scrounging for everybit of gear, cred and enhancements.

I am now seriously considering ending the game and starting new at 400 BP and keeping control of the game as the permenant GM but I feel guilty as it really wasn't the player's faults. But while I can throw them at increasingly more dangerous missions, I cannot see the game having any long prospects. Is this a fair assessment or am I taking a cheap way out? I like the game, the players but I am not having fun running it as is but that feels selfish.

Would you reboot?

[FastJack]

You might not need to reboot them. You could "burn" them (yes, like the USA show Burn Notice). Send them on a mission halfway around the world from their normal stomping grounds, then have them start scouting the run. When they are out doing legwork (minimal gear), have something go wrong, i.e. local police bust down the doors when meeting contacts, gunfight as they are purchasing gear, etc. They try to get back to their safehouse and find it crawling with Ares/S-K/Zurich Orbital black ops teams.

Make it so their only choice is to run back home, where they find their bank accounts have been wiped, property impounded or stolen or foreclosed, all their contacts no longer taking their calls. All the classic tropes of setting them back on their heels with only the gear they are carrying. Suddenly, their lifestyle drops to squatter and they have a reputation of utter failures. Even with top gear and magic, they will find jobs hard to get and have to eke out a living on runs they considered "below" them.

Of course, make sure you clear it all with the players--not the details, but that you want to do some major changes to not tick them off too much.

[Chaemera]

The players let it happen, so no, it's not not their fault. They could have called shenanigans, as could you. Frankly, I'd talk with the players, including the other GM, and find out if this is what they want to keep playing.

Explain your concerns, don't play it up as the old GM's fault, any one of you could have said something. Regardless of why no one called either of you on the power level, it's where you are now and you're all responsible for being there.

If most of the group wants to keep playing at this power level and you don't want to GM, let the other guy take over and either stick to playing or find a new group if you don't like being that powerful yourself.

Otherwise, start a new game and make it clear that you're not hot-swapping GMs. If the other guy wants to run for a while and you want to take a break, keep the games separate, build new characters for his game and leave yours on "pause" for the duration. Heck, those occasions where you're feeling a little burnt out and want a month or two break are great times to try out different systems, too. When I was getting bored with my DnD game, one of the players GMed an oWOD Vampire game for a while, fun and hijinks ensued and the other game was better for my relaxation and didn't have the confusion of two different GMing styles.

FastJack's solution works well if you don't feel you can have an honest conversation with your players, or they're too attached to the characters to walk away but don't mind a drop in power level.

[Critias]

Simple question:  are they having fun?

[The_Gun_Nut]

Another question:  Could you have fun with this?

[Fizzygoo]

It is all about everyone having fun after all.

Fastjack's suggestion is the way I would go. Gear and cred come and go; what the Johnson giveth, the enemies taketh away. Johnsons hear about kick ass teams so they higher them for runs that include fighting special-ops, sneaking into dragons' lairs, and getting dropped from low Earth orbit. Have no toys or all the toys, that doesn't matter, it's what game you decide to play that makes the difference. So they have big toys...play big

For me it's all about the narrative. Constructing the story that will be both fun to run and fun for them to play. So running the arc where the players get everything taken from them, going from high life to skid row, then opens the up to the story of making a comeback or die trying. If they make it then wow, even when times were at their worst they were able to preserver...which is the stuff of legend. No one tends to remember the stories about Godzilla crushing Bambi (well, save that one time, hehe) as much as they remember when Godzilla gets his powers taken away, shrunken to the size of a daisy, then attacked and nearly eaten by the (now) gigantic Bambi, only to survive and haven taken down Bambi with nothing but daisy petals and sheer will.

Ally spirits can be corrupted by Horrors, too

Look at it this way, the last run all 5 players got $1.5 million as a reward. If this was the payment for the run, that means the Johnson has pockets so deep that $7.5 million is expendable and that what ever the runners did for the Johnson was worth (long term or not) far more than $7.5 M. Who/what ever is behind the Johnson is very, economically, powerful. Which means he/she'll have powerful enemies looking to hurt or hire the players as well.

As far as rebooting...I try to only reboot upon the players deciding that their characters want to retire or TPK...as long as everyone is having fun of course.

But regardless...The_Gun_Nut and Critias' questions are the most important ones to answer before moving on.

[Reaper]

In addition to the other suggestions (again, assuming you think you can continue to enjoy yourself), remember that no shadowrunner is an island. Despite their own prowess, they know/love/owe favors to people/orginizations/etc. that are more vunerable. This doesn't mean that every story arc ends with aunt May as a hostage, I'm just saying that even very powerful characters can be challenged indirectly. Moreover, not every scenario can be solved by direct force of arms. Counter-insurgency, security detail with high-society clients, etc. require a degree of restraint. Also, very successful shadowrunners can become mentors, teachers and security consultants which requires them to use their formidable talents in new ways. If money no longer motivates your team, what does? Do they support some grand cause or have designs beyond their next pay day? These over arching aims can be the basis for compelling stories when firepower no longer works. I like guns as much as the nexy guy (the next guy isn't Ted Nugent, is it?), but gun fights are only one kind of interesting encounter that can be used. Finally, teams of prime runner caliber toons will need plot lines that have a correspondingly larger effect on the game world, but can still be managed without a constant escalation in the raw power of the opponents. Going from being the deniable assests to be the ones calling the shots and shaping world events can be a refreshing change. If you still want the occassional unstoppable force vs. immoveable object encounter, there are always dragons, high force spirits, and military assets (I have a fondness for warform biodrones). Even the most powerful characters will find that they don't have the same resources that a pissed off megacorp or nation has. 

Cheers,

Reaper

[Nomad Zophiel]

So now I have all players at 4 IP, everything they could possibly want / fit and most fights are technically over in under 9 secs. I have nothing I can really offer them as a rewards and they really have no motivation except to take more jobs. I personally feel that they have missed the best part of Shadowrun which is starting low and scrapping themselves up into the bigwigs and scrapping and scrounging for everybit of gear, cred and enhancements.

OK, first the combat side of things. Everyone has 4 IP. One way or another the fight is over in three rounds. GOOD! Well, good in my book anyway. That means that
1. rolling dice doesn't eat up your entire gaming night.
2. The PC's will think twice about starting a fight with anything that can challenge them. Once that fight starts they won't have time to run if it goes bad.

Now as far as players and their gear goes, there are some very creative ways to deal with it. There's a great bit in Dawn of Artifacts where the characters have to fly to their destination in an old 20th century private prop plane. Everyone gets one checked bag and what they can carry. Your rigger has a million creds in drones? Tough. Its a big, high risk mission where the PC's get cut off from their contacts, uprooted from their stomping grounds, get most of their gear stripped and its STILL one of the most cinematic and exciting scenarios I've seen in print. Places like Chicago make magic as dangerous for the mage as his target. How sure are you that your force 50 spirit won't turn on you when the local mana aspect goes toxic? Oh, and how good is their fake SIN? IRS audits suck.

Speaking of toxic - sounds like your PC's might be at the level where they can start chasing that million nuyen bounty on toxic shamans and blood mages. No Johnson, no expense account, no leads. They want the bounty, they fund the expedition themselves. They do the legwork. They get the living but unconscious mage back to a Draco Foundation office.

You say they have no motivation but taking jobs. If that's true, I feel kind of bad for the players. Most of my characters hit the ground running with lots of stuff that they want to do. Left to my own devices as a player, runs can actually be annoying and intrusive to the character's lifestyle. They become a way to pay the rent. The real adventures come from doing favors for friends to build up Contacts. As your players what their characters want to do with their lives. I'm sure someone has grander goals than being a shadowrunner. If not, look at the sheets and figure out which contacts might get in enough trouble to need a "little favor" that only a team of rich, powerful runners can provide. You know, something like "the entire Seattle Yakuza is after me".