Shadowrun Missions Living Campaign > Living Campaign Discussion
A beef with some missions: Amount of Pay
A.A. Salati:
There are really two issues here, and I would like to separate them.
1) People have a problem with Missions pay.
2) Some people want faces to get unlimited negotiation results, because they have a huge dice pool.
Issue 1 I'm on your side. Some runs should pay moderately, but every once in a while you should hit the big score. That's what you're in this for, right? As players sure, we want to have fun and do a Shadowrun, but in character? Show me the money! I want you to get paid. I want you to score. I'm going to side with you in Season 4 and do what I am able to make sure this isn't a complaint anymore.
Issue 2 is sour for me. It is the min/max undermining of what is supposed to be roleplaying. Shadowrun gives you some mechanics to help resolve it, but the complaint about how those mechanics are usually set up in Missions is disheartening and distasteful. Here's what seems to be the expectation:
* The Johnson meets us and makes a lowball offer. * The Face rolls negotation. * This Face power increases our pay. * We do the Mission and get paid.
This is NOT Shadowrun. This is a formula people are using to reduce the beginning of the game to a mechanic like an attack roll, dodge roll, and damage resistance test. I get that good negotiators are able to get more because they're slick and experienced, and that's definitely a cool part of the game. I love playing a Face! But please acknowledge that the reality of a job is that somebody, represented by the Johnson, wants to accomplish something that will usually net them more than the cost of the job. You can't exceed this dynamic without violating the reality of negotiation, and that is: No matter how good you are at it, negotiating is the process of two parties making a mutually beneficial agreement. There is a limit to what each party can concede before the agreement is no longer beneficial to them.
I totally get that Missions pay has been wonky, and I will even go so far as to say in my opinion too low. However, I think that is the root cause of discontent, not the negotiation success cap. The pay we're agreeing to work on, but everything in Shadowrun has limits on success. I think that's a good thing. Take Missions for what it is. It's a living campaign that's trying to accommodate everyone so that each of us can play with lots of other runners. It has difficulties, and it will always have difficulties because of what it is, but at the end of the day, we all want to sit around a table together and roleplay in this incredible setting.
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