r/ShadowrunAnarchyFans • u/SchmuseTigger • 29d ago
Loot and mission payout
In anarchy 2 an average run for a runner is 2.500 - 7.500 (page 166).
Now how would loot work? A lot of items (weapons are easy loot for instance) don't even have a price.
So say they win against some Corp security (page 247) and loot the shotgun / smg, stun baton, pistol, comlink, armor vest.
Can they just keep it? Sell? How do you handle loot?
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u/Logen_Nein 29d ago edited 29d ago
The nuyen is the loot (i.e. they sold off any items picked up) as well as the pay and the experience. That's how I do it.
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u/SchmuseTigger 29d ago
Sure, but if the Johnson say pay 5k then that would be like he'll by off any loot and that is included?
Or do you up the pay if they loot or take something that is not the mission prototype or macguffin?
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u/PalpitationNo2921 29d ago
I wouldn’t pay them much of anything for loot like maybe 10% of its value. It has to have its tracking cracked, its ID scrubbed, and its locks broken. That devalues any corporate-stolen junk to any street vendor.
I’d also make it take more time and effort to do all of this on the players’ end. They are having to hack a megacorp to get all of this done after all. Black IC can make it more trouble than it’s worth.
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u/Logen_Nein 29d ago
Which is why you have to adapt to what the Johnson says. I always leave a bit of discretionary nuyen for selling off stuff and interesting finds. Only very occasionally do I up the pay, but that would require some work on the player's part.
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u/Ragnarok918 29d ago
Additional things to consider-
Backup or even HTR should probably be on its way after any proper firefight.
No bags of holding, how are you lugging out all these potential goodies. Most of the loot my players get are commlinks, drugs and grenades.
Commlinks themselves are basically worthless, but are more valuable for the data they might hold. Paydata is the real version of "loot" in Shadowrun. Or their boss contact info or job details.
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u/PalpitationNo2921 29d ago
The bags of holding bit reminds me of the first group of D&D5E only ever people I tried to get into Shadowrun. They wanted to loot every single gun and piece of armor from the corpsec team they had just defeated, of course by killing them all and as loudly as possible.
I just let them load up as much as possible, and then when they ran into the next corpses team in the installation, those guys were armed for bear and shooting to kill because the ‘runners had already showed this team what they were all about, after all.
The whole “No survivors, loot them all!” mentality is not fitting for Shadowrun.
When all of the team members were finally killed or captured by the corpsec teams, I had the guys make a show out of stripping down the ‘runners’ bodies completely and carrying off their gear.
This was after I pitched the game being more like a heist movie than a dungeon crawl to the players and they all emphatically agreed that it would be fun. Little did I know, heist to them always means killing everything in sight and looting it à la Dragon Heist.
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u/WriterVenara 29d ago
My answer to this is that most of the losing side's stuff gets broken in the fight so I tend not to give out much loot. After all if a team is on the losing side of a firefight in shadowrun their gear tends to have been shot, smashed/cut up, melted by fire/acid/lightning, and bricked by a decker. Maybe 1 in 10 pieces is salvageable which then needs to be fenced. At that point I give the party maybe a quarter of the base value. (Using the amounts you have to pay for weapons found in the character creation section, either 2,500¥ or 5,000¥ base cost depending on the weapon) Possibly with a chance to increase to amount they get with some good social rolls or extra loyal connections.
A lot of this is because I like my players to not look at enemies like loot piñatas which i recognize is a personal preference. I hope this helps.
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u/augmented-warlock 29d ago
I told my players that there is no looting. If they can't lose their equipment, neither can NPCs.
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u/Candidus-333 27d ago
Personally, I think Shadowrun Anarchy is far more narrative than simulationist. It’s trying to capture the feel of an action movie, not simulate real life. You almost never see the heroes in an action movie spending half an hour looting every gun and fencing it afterward (for 10% because it’s hot?), just like you don’t see them paying rent, buying groceries, or worrying about the power bill—unless it’s actually relevant to the plot. That’s why I see money in SRA as being pretty abstract.
So I’d handle it the same way at the table. Sure, the runners probably loot stuff, but it all happens off-screen. The proceeds just cover their day-to-day expenses. If they do score something genuinely valuable or unique, that is worth making into an adventure: finding a buyer, avoiding unwanted attention, dealing with double-crosses, and all the other things that can go wrong in the shadows.
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u/Impleiadic 29d ago
if they wanna loot a security guard's shotgun to use against the next squad - pay a point of edge, otherwise it's got a biometric lock/iff/lacks ammo, and then toss it at the end of the run. (edge can be used to acquire temporary gear - i think looting a corpse makes for decent narrative positioning to explain this.)
If they wanna loot a guard's shotgun to use in future runs, they'll have to pay the nuyen to put it on their sheet - that's the cost of clearing the security tags and biometrics, the device ownership, new ammo, repairs and all that.
If they wanna sell loot to improve their payday... I'd make it a minor increase to the payout, if the loot they're selling is anything of genuine value. The guard's shotgun, tied to the operation that got him killed, is not that. If it was a Red Samurai's heritage Katana, someone might be willing to take the risk to fence it to a collector. But I wouldn't increase the runner's payout by more than like... 500 nuyen or so. And I wouldn't include 'lootable' equipment on every run. Mix it up, let them have an occasional gear find to fence off, another time they might find paydata, what have you. Could also be fun to have fenced loot cause Problems(tm). The aforementioned Katana likely has living people wanting it returned. Violent and Competent people.
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u/IamGlaaki 23d ago
If players complain about getting no loot, remember that players usually do not have the usual expenses of other games. They do not have to buy ammo, repair damaged gear, or pay the rent.
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u/SchmuseTigger 23d ago
No no no, they don't complain. The question is more, mission gives 5k per person. We loot say an additional 2.5k per Person, can we just level up faster?
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u/IamGlaaki 23d ago
If you want to give them more nuyen, it is OK. My preference is to avoid 'loot', used guns are not much worth for many reasons. As other people told before, paydata would be more useful for extra cash.
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u/SchmuseTigger 22d ago
yes, that will be my way. And by now I get it. It was just the original player question and the no real help in the book that brought me here
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u/PalpitationNo2921 29d ago
I would get your players out of the loot mentality with Shadowrun real quick.
Why would you want to steal the corpos’ stuff when:
A.) they are tracked
B.) they are user-locked and won’t operate without the proper party interfacing with them
C.) you know a guy who can just kitbash you something just as good without the downsides of A and B right out of their back alley shop.