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Fixing The Fence
by Gurth
I am the crime without trail And all I want right now is you
- Savatage, “I Am”
Scene One
Fade in. It is raining in the dark alley. An ork in a plastic raincoat walks up a few steps toward an unmarked door and knocks on it. A shutter in the door opens and closes again a second later. The door opens and the ork goes inside. We have not been able to see the ork’s face.
Scene Two
The club is dark and crowded with people dancing, the music playing at very high volume. At a table near the back are a female ork and two humans, both male. One of the humans holds a credstick and is looking at its display.
FIRST HUMAN: You said 25, this stick only shows 20.
ORK: Hey, that’s what I told ‘em too. Said they didn’t want to pay 25 for the kind of job you did. SECOND HUMAN: But we had agreed on 25!
FIRST HUMAN: (to second human) Let me handle this, ‘kay? (to ork) Look, it don’t matter how we did that run, if they said 25 they better pay 25 and not 20.
ORK: So what’re you gonna do about it? Tell ‘em? Good luck to you then. They gave me that stick and I’m giving it to you, plain and simple. If cred’s missing don’t bother me ‘bout it, alright?
SECOND HUMAN: Why don’t you give us the 5000 you took from our payment, eh? Makes us all happy.
ORK: I’m not gonna give you 5 grand I don’t have. What do you take me for? As far as I’m concerned, this biz is concluded. If you’ve got nothing more to say I’m getting out of here. This music’s starting to get on my nerves. Takes plastic raincoat from empty seat
SECOND HUMAN: You ain’t going anywhere without giving us our money. Understand? Extends hand razors
ORK: Use your brains for once, opens up a whole new world of experiences. Gets up
Both humans stand up.
SECOND HUMAN: threatens with hand razors One last chance. Don’t frag with us or we’ll frag with you.
FIRST HUMAN: slides pistol from sleeve I think he’s right, Skoog. Can’t let you go with our yen.
SKOOG: Can’t reason with a gun, can you? sticks hand in pocket
FIRST HUMAN: slightly panicked Don’t even try!
SKOOG: Relax, Canto. takes empty hand out of pocket Just want to go outside, talks better there than with this music on in here.
SECOND HUMAN: I don’t trust her, Canto.
CANTO: Hey, what can she try on us there that she can’t here? (to Skoog) Ladies first.
Scene Three
A door opens into a dark alley where rain is still pouring down, shedding a rectangle of light down into it. Skoog puts on her raincoat before stepping outside. The humans don’t seem to be bothered by the rain as they walk down the steps into the alley.
The door closes behind them, making the whole alley dark again.
SKOOG: puts up collar against the rain You still want that money?
CANTO: Yeah, and fast. Else we take it off you with or without you cooperating. aims gun at Skoog’s face
SKOOG: smiles nervously Relax chummer, relax. I haven’t got it on me…
Before she finishes her sentence a shot rings out, killing Canto before he can react. The other human turns to run away, but a second bullet sends him sprawling into a heap of garbage. Skoog walks over to Canto’s body and searches his jacket. She takes out the credstick and puts it into her raincoat.
Fade out.
Classic example of Hollywood drek-trid. No runner with a single brain cell left would go out of the bar and into the alley with a fixer he suspects of double-crossing him.
Jeff
Oh, I don’t know. If you know the alley is safe, sure, why not?
Bertie
Canto and that ‘other human’ didn’t know whether that alley was secured, did they? Else Skoog’s sniper wouldn’t have been there. And if they’d known about him, they’d have stayed inside or left via another entrance.
Desolate Dave
Skoog did have thing set up pretty neat, I must say. Good sniper, too, if he got both of the humans in a dark alley with one shot each. Still, that doesn’t mean the fixer was accurately portrayed in this bit of fiction… I know I wouldn’t do things this way, for one.
Whale
So tell all of us who don’t know, how would this go in a real-life situation?
Bertie
 Are you saying you *don’t know?? What are you doing here, then?
Desolate Dave
I don’t mind. It’s not like we’re giving away ‘trade secrets’ or some other corp-invented shit, are we? The way you handle a payment like the one described in the script is to set up a meet in neutral territory, preferably some place where there are loads of people. This far, it’s accurate: Skoog and the humans meet in a crowded club. Another good point is that it seems to be a semi-legal club (evidenced by the door and the bouncer behind it at the beginning), where you can do better deals than in places where you can run into the Star. The conversation is also pretty common. Someone pays the fixer to hire runners, the runners do what they’re asked, and then get less payment than what they were promised. Sometimes, it’s because the fixer is holding back some of the money in order to turn a larger profit himself, but also very often it’s because the fixer only gets paid after the run is over. If he gets less than he was promised, he can’t pay the runners as much as he originally told them. Which one was the case here I can’t say, because it doesn’t become clear from the text.
Whale
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Game Information
So far, fixers were only around as non-player characters. Maybe, if you have a kind gamemaster, he may let your character become a fixer eventually, but only after a long time of playing the character, building relationships with loads of different kinds of people, finding out where to get the things you need, and who to sell the stuff to that you don’t need-in short, a whole load of roleplaying that may take years to reach any kind of character who could be called a fixer.
This chapter has rules and guidelines for playing a fixer as a beginning character, and to create a Shadowrun campaign for fixer-type characters. You can play one of the people who hold the real power in the shadows with this: not the shadowrunners, who simply get hired to do the dirty work, but the people who actually set up those shadowruns, and make the most money off of them.
Fixers.
Fixer Skills
No-one except Dibbler could possibly sell Dibbler’s sausages.
- Terry Pratchett, “Moving Pictures”
Most of the skills here are Special Skills, and do not really default to the Skill Web. Attributes can be used in their place, if required, by applying the modifier indicated to the target number. (When an open-ended test is to be rolled in the skill, subtract the indicated modifier from the roll.) For example, “Charisma + 4” means that a character can substitute his Charisma for the skill, but must apply a +4 modifier to the target number, or a -4 modifier if he makes an open-ended test.
A character taking Equipment Acquisition, Evaluation, or Private Enterprising skill is required to take a Concentration in that skill, just as with Etiquette skill.
Fixers may take more than one Concentration or Specialization in Etiquette skill during character generation-normally, all characters may only take one Concentration or Specialization per skill (SRII, page 70), but this does not apply to fixers, who make extensive use of social interaction in order to do business. Each of these Concentrations or Specializations must be bought separately with skill points.
Equipment Acquisition
This skill allows fixers to find equipment of all kinds. The target number for its use is generally the Availability rating of the equipment. Anyone taking this skill must Concentrate or Specialize. The general Equipment Acquisition skill does not exist, even though there are a great deal of references to it in this text. In all cases, use the highest-rated Concentration a character has in it.
Concentrations: Biotech, Electronics (Communications, Cyberdecks, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Security/Counter-Security, Vehicle), Implants (Bioware, Cyberware), Magical Supplies (by tradition), Narcotics/BTLs (Illegal, Legal), Vehicles (by type), Weaponry (by class)
Default: Charisma + 4
Evaluate
Governs the determination of the market and insurance values of items. The target number will depend on how familiar the character is with the item being evaluated, from 2 for things he deals with everyday, to as high as 12 for something he has never seen before in his life.
Anyone taking this skill must Concentrate or Specialize. The general Evaluate skill does not exist.
Concentrations: Biotech, Electronics (Communications, Cyberdecks, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Security/Counter-Security, Vehicle), Implants (Bioware, Cyberware), Magical Supplies (by tradition), Vehicles (by type), Weaponry (by class)
Default: Intelligence + 4
Laundering
This skill is used to remove the origin of the money a character possesses. This makes it appear like the money always belonged to him, or that he got it through legitimate channels. The concentrations represent where the money came from, and specializing increases the skill in the same area, as with Electronics skill.
Concentrations: Business, Criminal
Default: Intelligence + 6
Private Enterprising
This skill is used for general, everyday, fixer business. Its use is explained in the Doing Business section, below, but it should be said here that this skill is essential to being a fixer in the first place.
Anyone taking this skill must Concentrate or Specialize. The general Private Enterprising skill does not exist, even though there are a great deal of references to it in this text. In all cases, use the highest-rated Concentration a character has in it.
Concentrations: Biotech, Electronics (Communications, Cyberdecks, Entertainment, Information (by field), Lifestyle, Security/Counter-Security, Vehicle), Implants (Bioware, Cyberware), Magical Supplies (by tradition), Narcotics/BTLs (Illegal, Legal), Vehicles (by type), Weaponry (by class)
Default: Intelligence + 4
Doing Business
dipping in the icing, bringing home the largest turkey in the field, breaking all the piggy banks, scooping up the booty, licking all the right holes, bolstering the payroll
- Bad Religion, “Quality Or Quantity”
For those who own the Shadowbeat sourcebook, fixer business is handled a lot like musical performances under these rules, except that those generally take a bit less time than a fixer’s dealings. Open-ended rolls are used in some places (see Impact Test on page 10 of Shadowbeat). Basically, it boils down to re-rolling any 6 you roll on a skill test that has no target number, and discarding all but the highest result.
First of all, fixers have a Fixer Status, like the Rocker Status for musicians.
Part-Timer
Resources Cost: Free
Lifestyle: Street
Police Trouble: 1
Income Multiplier: 50
Reputation: None
You’ve got a regular job or you’re unemployed, and you do some illegal dealings to make a bit of extra money on the side. Nothing major, just some nuyen to pay the rent with. You probably don’t do anything that’s really illegal anyway, you just bend the rules a bit. You do business out of your own home, local bars, or possibly from your regular workplace (without your boss knowing, of course). Your operation will be very unlikely to be noticed by law enforcement agencies, but if they do, they probably will just let you do what you do-you’re too much trouble for too small a result.
Street-Dealer
Resources Cost: 500
Lifestyle: Street
Police Trouble: 2
Income Multiplier: 150
Reputation: 14
In the past, you started out as some nobody selling odds and ends, but gradually you’ve made yourself a reputation, and now some people come to you instead of the other way around all the time. It’s not like you’ve got a major business going just yet, but you’re on the right track. Your office is wherever you happen to be standing, whether it’s a streetcorner, a bar, a car park, or anywhere else. Most of the time, you have to actively find yourself customers because not enough people actually know of you to come and seek you out. Either that, or you just don’t sell the quality or quantity they need. You do tend to get into police trouble sometimes, especially if you operate out of a nice neighborhood-the cops don’t like folks hanging around selling other peoples’ property in those places.
Dealer
Resources Cost: 1,000
Lifestyle: Low
Police Trouble: 4
Income Multiplier: 500
Reputation: 10
There’s people out there who know who you are, and they tell their friends about you. Folks come to visit you if they think you have what they need, instead of you having to find them. You’re probably operating out of a warehouse or some other building that belongs to nobody in particular, and you’re not hanging around on a streetcorner anymore. This has the definite advantage that people can find you. It also has the definite disadvantage that people can find you. A small number of people may be working for you.
Johnson
Resources Cost: 10,000
Lifestyle: Middle
Police Trouble: 3
Income Multiplier: 2,500
Reputation: 8
You have made a pretty good name for yourself over the years, so much that you’ve become one of the big(ger) names in the local underworld. Potential buyers will come to your regular place of business in search of whatever it is you have to sell them. You have at least a warehouse with merchandise somewhere (or a cache of equivalent size, depending on what you trade in), and connections into various areas of the shadows and the organized crime scene. You also know the difference between the two. Furthermore, you are regularly asked to act as a middle man between shadowrunners and the people who hire them; you pocket a substantial “negotiator’s fee” from these deals, of course. You probably also have a few others working for you, lightening your workload and forming the beginning of a criminal organization in the process.
Mobster
Resources Cost: 100,000
Lifestyle: High
Police Trouble: 2
Income Multiplier: 5,000
Reputation: 6
You’ve got a well-established network of contacts all over the city, and very likely outside it as well. Your dealings are mainly through others, to cut the trails leading back to you. You probably have a real office somewhere, and masquerade your illegal activities with a few dummy or semi-real companies that you can use to launder large amounts of money through. Law enforcement finds it hard to touch you, but you can bet your ass they are on the lookout for anything that will let them bring charges against you. These aren’t the only problems you face, however-it’s likely that other criminals are after your operation as well, and they don’t follow the law any more than you do…
Crime Boss
Resources Cost: 500,000
Lifestyle: Luxury
Police Trouble: 1
Income Multiplier: 10,000
Reputation: 5
You head a major criminal organization that will often deal in lots of things all at once. You know who the real bosses in the Mafia and Yakuza are, and they’ve most likely heard of you. You may even be doing business directly with them, cutting out the middle men who are a few steps below you on the ladder now. You do your business from the office of a large, real company, or even more than one. The police will have great trouble getting any evidence against you specifically, so they usually have to contend themselves with arresting your employees. But hey, those are there to make sure you don’t get caught, right?
Keep in mind that the names of the levels here are purely artificial. No fixer worth the name calls himself a “Mobster” or a “Johnson”. They may have all kinds of different names for themselves.
What It All Means
Resources Cost
This is how much nuyen you need to pay from your Resources money, at character generation, to take this Fixer Status. For example, by spending 1,000¥, your character will have Dealer status.
Lifestyle
The Lifestyle you get automatically when you take this Fixer Status in character generation. You won’t need to spend any Resources money on Lifestyle, unless you want to pay ahead or need a second Lifestyle as a means to lay low.
If you want a higher lifestyle than the one listed, just pay the difference between the two-a Dealer wanting a Middle lifestyle pays 4,000¥ extra.
Police Trouble
This is the number of dice that the gamemaster rolls against once every month to see if you got in trouble with the cops for doing something illegal. If you don’t touch illegal stuff, they still may come to investigate, but their target number will go up to reflect this fact. The target number depends on the legality of what you buy and sell, as explained under Police Investigations, on page xx.
You will notice that the number of dice drops off the higher Status you get, and then starts to increase again. This is because well-established fixers bury all traces of their illegal activities in dummy corporations, middle men, and all kinds of other dirty tricks to prevent trails leading back to them. On the other hand, most cops won’t bother too much with small fish if they can catch bigger ones, so if you’re dealing used car parts from your garage to make a few extra yen, you’re also less likely to get into trouble with the Star.
Income Multiplier
This represents how much nuyen you make each month from your deals. Each month, make an open-ended Private Enterprising skill roll, and multiply it by the Income Multiplier. The result is the amount of nuyen you made by dealing in the various goods of your choice. You might want to launder this money (as described under Dirty Laundry, p.xx) to make it less easily traced by the cops, corps, and anyone else with an interest in your bank balance.
Reputation
This number represents how well-known you are in your chosen area of business. It is used as a target number for Perception tests made by people to recognize you. They must have some way of knowing you, for example because they’re your competitors, potential customers, stand on the wrong (from your point of view) side of the law, and so on. Someone who isn’t involved in the criminal circuit whatsoever will not need to make a roll to know that Diane Kincaid is that fixer who sells cheap replicas of Fuchi decks, for example-he’ll automatically fail that roll, because there’s no way he can have this information about Diane in the first place. On the other hand, someone looking to buy a handgun will need to roll to know that the man he happened to walk into is Harlowe White, THE man to turn to for mint-condition Ares products.
Monthly Rolls
Each month, when you pay for your Lifestyle costs, you make a number of rolls to see how well you did business this month. The most important is the Private Enterprising skill roll, which is open-ended. As explained previously, multiply the result of this roll by the Income Multiplier for your Fixer Status to find how much money you made this month.
Now also multiply the Private Enterprising roll result by your Intelligence, which results in your Deal Factor. Apply any modifiers from the Deal Factor Table to this, and then look in the Fixer Status Table to see what additional effects take place.
| Situation | Modifier |
|---|---|
| Reputation over 10 | -2 |
| Reputation under 6 | +2 |
| Police Trouble rating | -(2 x rating) |
| Insufficient contacts | -1 per contact |
| Deal Factor | Business Dealings |
|---|---|
| 9 or less | Very poor. You messed up pretty bad this month, making others lose the little respect they had for you. Your Fixer Status is reduced by one level, and add +2 to your Reputation permanently. If you already are a Part-Timer, subtract 20 from your Income Multiplier and add 1 to the Police Trouble rating, until you achieve an Exceptional or better result. |
| 10 to 21 | Poor. People start to wonder whether you can live up to your promises; add +1 to your Reputation and reduce your income by 5% (including for the past month) until you get an Exceptional result or better. |
| 22 to 36 | Average. Nothing much changes in the way you do business. |
| 37 to 60 | Exceptional. Subtract 1 from your Reputation permanently, and increase your income by 10% for the past month. |
| 61 to 96 | Incredible. Subtract 2 from your Reputation and increase your income over the past month by 25%. |
| 97 or more | Superb. Increase your Fixer Status by one level, and subtract 2 from your Reputation. Also increase your income over the past month by 25%, and subtract 1 from the Police Trouble rating permanently (it may drop to 0 in this way, but not below that). |
If you lose or gain a Fixer Status level, keep your Lifestyle, Police Trouble and Reputation as they were (except where it is indicated to modify them on the Fixer Status Table), but change your Income Multiplier to the one for the new Status.
The Insufficient Contacts modifier works as follows: you and your gamemaster must decide how many of your contacts are “business associates” of yours. Now look at your Equipment Acquisition and Private Enterprising skills, and take the lowest of the two (if that’s 0, use the other one). If your number of associates is less than twice the skill level, subtract 1 from your Deal Factor for every point of difference between the two.
“Associates” in this context means contacts who are actually useful to your day-to-day fixer business. A sasquatch entertainer contact does not count as an associate unless he also happens to be involved in arms trafficking in between shows, for example.
Harry The Bastard (AKA Ted) has Equipment Acquisition skill 5 and Private Enterprising 2. He has three business associates, which means he subtracts 1 from his Deal Factor in all cases: the lowest skill is rated at 2, which makes 4 if it’s doubled, and 4 minus 3 (the number of associates) is 1.
In another example, Diane sells those cheap cyberdeck knock-offs, with her Private Enterprising skill of 3. She’s a Street-Dealer status fixer with a Reputation of 13, a Police Trouble rating of 2, and an Income Multiplier of 150. She rolls her 3 dice, and, amazingly, scores 3, 3, and 3; This gives her a total roll of 3 (that’s what the highest-rolling die scored). She makes 150 x 3 = 450 nuyen that month from her illegal dealings.
Multiplying the roll of 3 by her Intelligence of 4, she gets 12. Her Reputation is over 10, so she subtracts 2 from this, and 4 more because her Police Trouble rating is 2. This makes a total Deal Factor of 6 (12 - 2 - 4).
Oops… Diane loses status, and is now a Part-Timer. Her Income Multiplier drops to the standard 50 for a Part-Timer, but her other fixer stats are modified or stay as they were: +2 is added to her Reputation, which was 13 but now becomes 15, while her Police Trouble rating stays at 2.
At the same time you roll your character’s Private Enterprising skill, the gamemaster rolls the Police Threat rating dice, as explained under Police Investigations, below.
Time Is Money
Ik heb voor alles helemaal geen tijd Ook niet voor heel even Ik moet aan m’n salaris denken En aan m’n relaties
- Doe Maar, “De Bom”
Naturally, all this doesn’t come for free. You don’t go hanging around the house all month doing nothing much, and then get to make a roll to see how much you’ve earned. Being a fixer is actually work, you know.
Per point of Private Enterprising skill, you’re going to have to work a number of hours per week, equal to the square of your (Private Enterprising skill rating plus 4) minus (twice your Equipment Acquisition skill rating). This time is spent visiting your contacts, calling them on the telecomm, buying supplies, selling those supplies again, letting people come to you and tell you about their business ideas, and so on.
If you don’t have Private Enterprising skill, use your Charisma for the calculation, but double the final amount of time. For example, someone with Private Enterprising skill 4 will need to spend 64 hours a week, while a character without Private Enterprising skill but with a Charisma of 4 will need 128 hours per week (64 doubled).
Especially at higher skill levels, you’re going to spend a lot of time just keeping your business running. This may result in you having to spend more time than there is available-a week only has 168 hours, and you will have to eat and sleep sometime, haven’t you? If you assume a minimum of 8 hours of sleep and associated exercises per day (which is very little, by the way), you end up with 112 hours per week. Now, if your Private Enterprising skill is 7 or greater, you’re going to be in trouble at this point: (7+4)² = 121, so here you’d need an Equipment Acquisition skill of at least 5 to be able to fit it all into a week’s work. The best option is to let other people do your work for you, in effect creating a network of fixers loyal to you (or as loyal as they get-they’re in this for the money, not because they like you so much).
The Time Table shows how much time you need to devote to being a fixer, per week. Look up your Private Enterprising skill level in the first column, and cross-reference it with your Equipment Acquisition skill level that’s displayed horizontally at the top. The resulting number is the necessary time per week, in hours. This is completely based on the formula given above for calculating the same value. The table is there to save you the time of making the calculation yourself.
Making Shorter Weeks
Another option is to simply do less work, although you’ll probably make less money this way. Take the number of hours you want to work each week, and add your Equipment Acquisition skill to this. Then take the square root of this, and subtract 4 from the result. Don’t round off.
What you just calculated is the actual Private Enterprising skill you use for that week. Assume there are four weeks in a month, and add up these four skill ratings for the individual weeks, then divide by 4 and only now round all fractions down to the nearest whole number (if it would round to zero, round it up instead). The result is the Private Enterprising skill rating you will use for all your rolls that month.
Harry The Bastard, with his Equipment Acquisition skill 5 and Private Enterprising 2, needs to put in 26 hours a week. Let’s say he’s a bit busy with other things this week, so he can only put in 20 hours.
Next week, he can do his full 26 hours. The week after that is very hectic, and Harry only works for 7 hours. The fourth week, everything is more or less back to normal, and Harry does 25 hours instead of 26.
For the first week, his actual skill rating is ((20 + 5)^.5) - 4 = (25^.5) - 4 = 5 - 4 = 1.00. The second week, it’s the full 2, seeing that he worked all his required hours. The third week, it’s -0.535 (a negative rating!), and the fourth it’s 1.47.
The total of all this is 3.93, divided by 4 weeks is 0.983. That rounds up to 1, so Harry only has an effective skill of 1 for this month.
And no, you don’t get extra skill dice if you work more hours than you’re required to. You either have what it takes or you don’t. [However, as an optional rule, gamemasters may allow players to put in three hours of work to add an extra hour to the character’s workload, and then use the same formula as above for figuring the actual skill level. For example, a character who has to work for 24 hours a week (Private Enterprising 1, Equipment Acquisition 1, makes 24 hours per week), but does 57 hours each week of the month, has an actual skill of 2 (33 hours of extra work translate to 11 added hours, which makes a total of the 35 hours necessary for a character with Private Enterprising 2 and Equipment Acquisition 1).]
Fixer Networks
Bow down before the one you serve You’re going to get what you deserve
- Nine Inch Nails, “Head Like A Hole”
Letting others do the work for you will lighten your own workload, but not on a one-to-one basis.
You can start out with a network during character generation, but you must pay for them as for a gang or tribe (50,000¥). This gives you enough people to reduce your workload by 60% at maximum (read on for how to calculate workload reductions). Each of these “employees” will have Private Enterprising and/or Equipment Acquisition skills at a level that is lower than your own.
Each person in the network must have either Private Enterprising or Equipment Acquisition skill, or both. To determine by how much they reduce your working time, use the following formula:
For example, if one of your underlings has Private Enterprising 5 and Equipment Acquisition 3, you gain a work-time reduction of (2.5+2)² + (3÷2) = 20.25 + 1.5 = 21.75, or 22 hours. If you would normally have to work for 60 hours a week, now you’ve only got to put in 38.
Don’t round fractions off until after you’ve calculated the total time reduction given by all your employees combined. Then round the reduction off to the nearest whole hour.
The Underling Time Table shows how many hours of work an employee does for you, based on his Private Enterprising and Equipment Acquisition skill levels.
People working for you will generally have lower skill levels than you have-if they had higher ratings, it’s likely you’d be working for them, not the other way round.
You can never reduce your own workload to less than 10% of the actual time you should put in, no matter how many people you hire to work for you. The only way to do that is to totally give away all your business to your workforce. But any good fixer would keep an eye on things, if nothing else than just to make sure they don’t run the empire you built up over the years into the ground within a week. And that constitutes work…
However, you can always choose to have someone do less work than they actually can. You could let the person from the previous example only do 10 hours’ work, leaving you with 50 per week to do yourself. You can’t make him do more than 22 hours a week, though.
Paying Your Workers
As you can expect, they don’t do it for nothing. Everybody wants to make money off your deals, so you’d better pay them if you want to keep them working for you. Note that the payment we’re talking about here is partly actual payments (like wages) you make to these people, and partly money you would normally have made, but which they pocket themselves now as compensation for their troubles. Hey, you don’t expect them to give you all the money they make for you, do you?
Multiply the number of hours your employee worked for you by 0.2, and then by your Income Multiplier. The result is the amount of money you lose to your worker in one way or another. If this would, in the end, result in you losing more money than you made, the whole thing levels out at a zero nuyen profit for you this month: all your income gets spent again on your employees.
Fencing
Many fixers buy and sell stolen goods, or goods that other people (not necessarily the owners) are also after. This is a relatively easy and profitable venture, because most people who have something to sell need the money you’re offering for it, even though it’s very much below the item’s actual worth.
The way things are normally handled from a shadowrunner’s (or criminal’s) point of view is explained on page 188 of SRII. Most of this applies to the fixer’s side of the deal as well, except he doesn’t need to find a fence-people come to him, not the other way around. The amount of money the fixer has available should definitely not be determined by the rules under Financing the Fence, p.188, SRII.
Dirty Laundry
It’s no secret that a conscience can sometimes be a pest
- U2, “The Fly”
To anyone who knows where to look, the money a fixer has made will appear to have come from a non-legitimate source. This is because most people with a regular income find it hard to explain why they have a few tens of thousands of nuyen on their cred accounts while they only make 1500 bucks a month, plus of course where the Westwind 2000 and the apartment in Inglewood came from, not to mention the diamond watch…
Anyway, you get the picture. You have to make it appear like you got the money through some or another legal means, disguising where it really came from and preventing investigators from tracking it back to your shadowy activities-in criminal jargon, it’s called laundering.
This is easier if you have no SIN, because in that case you won’t get bothered by the taxman anyway.
In game terms, you make a Laundering skill roll. If you don’t have this skill, you may know someone who does, but these people generally charge a fee equal to about 10% of the money they launder for you.
The skill roll’s target number is a basic 5, or a 6 if you don’t have a SIN. There are no real modifiers to this roll (wounds do not apply), except that the gamemaster may modify it to take into account the general credibility of your scheme. A -1, for example, if the “reason” you have thought up is very plausible, or even +4 if it’s totally unbelievable. Yes, you have to explain to the gamemaster what you want to project to the outside world as the reason for you having the money.
If you fail to roll any successes, add 1 to your Police Trouble rating for the coming month only. If you totally mess it up an roll all ones, the gamemaster makes an immediate Police Trouble roll, in addition to the normal one for that month. Oh, and don’t forget to add the extra die because none of your Laundering skill dice succeeded.
If you do roll successes, count them and multiply them by 15%. The result is the percentage of the money you started with, that you still have after laundering. This DOES NOT include the fee charged by someone else to launder your money for you. No matter how many successes you have, you cannot get more than 90% efficiency-that is, if you launder 100,000 nuyen you will at most end up with 90,000 afterward. The difference goes into paying for the laundering operation.
Letting someone else launder your money usually costs 10% of the amount of money you get out of the laundering operation. This is in addition to the 90% maximum efficiency mentioned above, so you could get a total of 81,000¥ out of your 100 grand (10% you lose automatically, and 10% of the rest-that’s 9,000¥-goes onto the launderer’s credstick).
Note that the money we’re talking about here is that which you have after paying any people you may have working for you. How they launder their money is not your problem. Usually.
No Laundering
Of course, you don’t NEED to launder your money at all. It’s just that having large amounts of unexplained money around will sooner or later attract the cops’ attention.
However, there is also no need to launder every nuyen each time you make one. You can elect to wait a few months and pot up some money before letting it flow through the system-the system above assumes you make one Laundering skill roll which covers your activities for the whole past month. It doesn’t need to, if you don’t want to.
Police Investigations
Once every month, the gamemaster should make a Police Threat roll, using the fixer’s Police Threat rating for the number of dice to roll. The target number for this roll varies with the general legality of your practices, as well as a variety of other factors. Use the Police Threat Table to find the base target number, based on the Legality Category (from Shadowtech) of what you generally deal in. If you trade equally in multiple categories of goods, take the lowest, and apply a -1 modifier per two additional categories (rounding up).
Diane’s main merchandise is illegal cyberdecks, or Class CD materials. That makes the target number for the gamemaster’s Police Threat roll a 7. She lives in a high-class apartment in Auburn (AA rated by Lone Star), but all her business is conducted from an old warehouse in Boise (rated at D). This gives a +2 modifier for her High lifestyle, and +0 for the D-rated area of operations.
Oh, and she has a SIN, so there’s a -2 for that, and the fact that she has about 15 thousand nuyen of unexplained money on her credstick gives a -1.
This makes a total target number of 7 +2 -2 -1, or 6.
If Diane were to sell decks out of her living room, she’d face a -4 modifier to the Police Threat test target number, instead of +2, and would result in a Police Threat target number of 4, not 6.
If the roll yields any successes, the police has some kind of lead on your activities. No successes means they don’t know anything about what you’ve been doing the past month, but even one success indicates that they know you’re out there, and have at least a rudimentary idea of your dealings in the shadows. Whether they act upon this is up to the gamemaster to decide, but in general he should keep track of the number of successes that get accumulated over time. When certain numbers of successes are reached, various actions may be taken, at the gamemaster’s discretion. The Law Enforcement Reaction Table gives some suggestions.
It is highly recommended that the Police Threat roll is made where the player can’t see it, and that the number of generated successes is likewise kept secret.
| Class | Target Number |
|---|---|
| A, B, C: Bladed or Blunt weapons | 10 |
| D, E: Projectile weapons or Pistols | 9 |
| F: Rifles | 8 |
| G, H, I, J, L: Automatic, Heavy, or Military weapons, ammo or explosives | 6 |
| K: Military armor | 8 |
| BA, CA: Bioware/Cyberware | 9 |
| BB, BC, CB, CC: Bioware/Cyberware | 6 |
| CD: Matrix Tech | 7 |
| E1: Equipment | 11 |
| E2: Equipment | 8 |
| E3: Equipment | 5 |
| M1: Substances | 10 |
| M2: Substances | 7 |
| M3: Substances | 3 |
| Legal stuff (any)¹ | 3 |
| Modifier | |
| Security Rating of area character operates out of²: | |
| AAA to A | -6 |
| B | -2 |
| C | -1 |
| D | +0 |
| E | +4 |
| Z | +8 |
| Matrix³ | +4 |
| Character’s Lifestyle²: | |
| Street | +6 |
| Squatter | +2 |
| Low | +0 |
| Middle | +0 |
| High | +2 |
| Luxury | +6 |
| Character has a SIN | -2 |
| Character has no SIN | -0 |
| Character’s amount of unlaundered money: | |
| none | +2 |
| up to 10,000¥ | -0 |
| up to 50,000¥ | -1 |
| up to 100,000¥ | -2 |
| up to 250,000¥ | -4 |
| up to 1,000,000¥ | -7 |
| over 1,000,000¥ | -10 |
¹ This is to represent the fact that, even though you only buy and sell things that are totally legal, the police don’t necessarily believe you when you tell them this. They might decide to take a look for themselves.
² A character’s Lifestyle is not the same as the Security Rating of his area of operations. It pays to keep business and pleasure separate, chummer.
³ This is used only if the character does his or her business through matrix contacts almost exclusively. The other Security Ratings do not apply.
Under Surveillance
When a character is under surveillance, add the indicated number of dice to his Police Threat rating. Additionally, lower all target numbers for Police Threat tests by -1.
These extra dice are removed at one die per month-if 11 successes have been gathered against Diane, her Police Threat rating is up by +4 for the next month. At the end of that month (after the Police Threat test for that month), it goes down to +3, then +2 the month after that, and so on.
If the character does anything that is obviously illegal while under actual surveillance, he might be arrested on the spot, if the cops (i.e. the gamemaster) think they can make a case at that moment. If not, they will keep it in mind for when the character is actually arrested.
| Successes | Action taken |
|---|---|
| 0 | None-they don’t know the character is in business at all |
| 2 | Character will be kept under surveillance if time and manpower allows (unlikely): Police Threat rating +1 |
| 5 | Character will likely be kept under surveillance at least some of the time: Police Threat rating +2 |
| 10 | Character is under definite surveillance, and is prime target for law enforcement: Police Threat rating +4 |
| 15 | Character is arrested |
Arrests
Naturally, in all cases of arrest, charges will be brought to bear based on all crimes the police has gathered evidence about, or which have been confessed by the character. Use Shadowtech or the gamemaster book from the Denver boxed set to determine the appropriate sentence (fines, prison, and so on).
You’ll usually get charged with possession and/or transport of materials in the classes of equipment you deal in, plus fraud, solicitation, trafficking, or any combination of them. You may also get charged with things like assault, extortion, illegal entry, kidnapping, larceny (most often grand), and murder (2 or 3, usually) depending on the way you conduct business. Additionally, perhaps accessory to any or all of the above, and conspiring to commit crimes. Impressive list, huh?
At the gamemaster’s discretion, only threats of this nature will be made in order to coerce the character to become an informant. If he gives in, and this fact ever gets out, the character’s Fixer Status drops at least 2 levels, possibly more. If nobody with a gun comes after him, that is.
Getting Rid Of The Heat
You may want to cut back on your operations to keep the police off your trail for a while, if you believe they may have a lead on you. This means you have to do less work than normal, because you have to keep up the appearance that you’re an honest citizen who doesn’t fraternize with known lawbreakers. An alternative is to give “donations” to the local police force.
Laying Low
You will have to keep this up for some time in order to shake off any detectives, or even undercover cops, investigating your case. If there are any, of course.
You will have to cut back the number of hours you work in a week, and the less you work, the higher the chances are you’ll get rid of police surveillance.
Laying low is left to the gamemaster’s discretion as to how it affects the character’s business and the chance the police comes knocking on his door. It is too complex to give any real rules for, unfortunately.
Making Donations
You have to have some kind of working relationship with the local police force for this tactic to work-they have to know who’s paying them, and why. This means you’re going to have to have at least one contact there.
It’s difficult to give hard rules for this situation; the best advice is to roleplay the situation, with the gamemaster deciding the cops’ attitude toward this point. For example, if you get along with them well, most officers in the precinct feel they’re underpaid, and there isn’t much chance of anyone finding out about your bribes, they’re much more likely to accept than when you’ve arranged for the deaths of a few of their colleagues, they earn a good salary, and Internal Affairs is breathing down their necks all the time.
If you bribe someone higher up in the police chain of command, you’ll very likely “control” most of the people below him or her as well. The reason here is simple: if you bribe a lieutenant, he can order his officers to drop cases in which you seem to be involved.
Those requiring a dice rolling solution can do this by rolling an opposed Negotiation test between the officer being bribed and the character doing the bribing. There is a +4 modifier to the player’s target number, because taking a bribe could be bad for the officer’s career. (Player’s desired result is harmful to NPC, SRII page 182.)
As a guide for the size of the payment, the Bribe Table gives typical bribes, based on your Police Threat rating. If you pay the amount indicated, your effective Police Threat rating goes down as shown. This is not cumulative-that is, to get it reduced by 2, you only need to pay for level 2, not level 1 as well.
You cannot reduce the Police Threat level by more than half this way, for the simple reason that you cannot control all police officers in town. Also keep in mind that bribing one precinct won’t do anything for another precinct, so that one may still come after you. The same goes for security forces in general: paying Lone Star will not keep Knight Errant off your back.
| Payment made | Rating modifier |
|---|---|
| (Police Threat² ) x 100¥ | -1 |
| (Police Threat²) x 250¥ | -2 |
| (Police Threat²) x 500¥ | -3 |
| (Police Threat²) x 1,000¥ | -4 |
| (Police Threat²) x 2,000¥ | -5 |
You have to keep up your payment every month, else the reduction is immediately undone.
Diane has a Police Trouble rating of 2. She thinks this is too high, especially because she’s got an important deal coming up next week, and decides to make a donation to the local captain. She can only reduce her Police Threat rating by -1, because that would halve her current rating of 2. This costs 400 nuyen: (2²) x 100 = 4 x 100 = 400 nuyen, and makes Diane’s Police Threat rating 1 for the coming month, instead of 2. She doesn’t pay the cops again after that, so it goes back to 2 then.
Gamemaster note: It pays to keep a character’s Police Threat rating secret from that character’s player. That way, he or she won’t really know when things might get too hot, and will have to take precautions-possibly at the wrong times. If you take this route, don’t mention how high the bribe should be to reduce the Police Threat; instead, let the character pay whatever he wants to, and then compare it to the bribe you have in mind. If it’s enough, the bribe will work; if not, well, too bad for the player.
Bribing To Remove Police Threat Successes
This is done in much the same was as bribing to reduce your Police Threat rating itself, but instead of reducing the number of dice they get to roll, you reduce the number of successes that is applied to the Law Enforcement Reaction Table. This means they make evidence that was gathered against you disappear, so you cannot be caught because of it.
Every success you want to have removed costs an amount of nuyen equal to the total number of successes that has already been gathered, multiplied by 1,000. For example, getting 3 successes removed costs 3,000¥. You cannot make them lose more than 5 successes per month this way-if you want more, wait until next month.
Flip Side Of The Credstick: Internal Affairs
The dangerous side of bribing the police is that, when Internal Affairs finds out, the cops will be in trouble-and they’ll often be quite happy to make you share their misery. In short, they’ll tell IA who bribed them.
This doubles your Police Threat rating (the actual one, not the one that includes the bribe modifier) for the month after IA found out about your donations, which is removed at 2 points for each subsequent month. This only applies if you have paid bribes to the police in the month in which Internal Affairs find out about them. If you’ve made any in previously, but not in that month, your Police Threat rating gets a +1 for one month.
Your Police Threat is 4, but you’ve reduced it to 2 by means of a bribe. IA does an audit, and finds out about your money going into officers’ pockets; the officers in question confess to these corruption charges, and mention your name. You now have a Police Threat rating of 8 for the coming month (4, doubled), 6 for the month after that, and it’s back to the normal 4 again in the month after that one.
Gamemasters can assume that Internal Affairs takes a look at any given precinct every 2D6 months. If they feel generous, they may apply the Rule of Six to these dice. However, if evidence is destroyed because a player bribed the police, immediately roll 2D6-2. If the roll is below, or equal to, the number of successes that were removed from the Law Enforcement Reaction Table, IA pays a visit to the precinct to investigate the disappearance of evidence from there.
Deckers
Another way to remove successes from the Law Enforcement Reaction Table is to get a decker to break into the police Matrix system and erase or alter relevant files. The hows and whys of such an operation is up to the gamemaster to work out, but it should not be possible to erase an entire police record without attracting attention to your operation. Two or three successes is manageable per try, but do it too often, or try to go al the way immediately is bad for business-although a good fixer can continue working from inside a prison if necessary.
Anyway, this would be a shadowrun, and is best handled as such. Police matrix systems are hard to crack, by the way. If rolling up a random one, (pages 62 to 65, Virtual Realities 2.0), make it at least a medium-security Orange or Red system.
Fixer Types
Just as there are various “styles” in shadowrunning, fixers come in all kinds of orientations. Most of these are represented by the various concentrations of the Private Enterprising and Equipment Acquisition skills, and it is recommended players concentrate in one or two areas of these skills. It will give them a higher income, because more dice give a higher chance of rolling high results.
What follows here are descriptions of a number of types of fixer that commonly exist in Seattle and most other North American cities. All of these are available to player characters, although you should discuss your choice with your gamemaster. If you don’t like any of the ones presented here, make one up yourself that does suit your ideas.
As with the fixer status levels, most fixers do not use the names given here to describe themselves. Most prefer the term “businessman.”
Dealer
The Dealer is a military/mercenary fixer. He buys mainly military gear, often even directly from arms producers or importers, or sometimes from military surplus sales, and then sells them to any merc units he has good relations with. Sometimes, a Dealer also works as a Middle-Man (see below) to negotiate deals between mercenaries and prospective employers, although this could get him into trouble with merc organizations like MET-2000 if he does it too much.
Suggested skills: Equipment Acquisition (any military), Etiquette (Mercenary), Laundering, Negotiation, Private Enterprising (any military)
Suggested contacts’ affiliations: corporate, government, mercenary, military
Special rules: Dealers apply a -1 Availability target number modifier when acquiring military gear, but add 25% to the acquisition time for it, because of the paperwork and legal troubles a Dealer often has to go through. (See p.81, Fields of Fire.)
Deckmeister
The Deckmeister is the person to turn to for anything that’s supposed to get hooked up to the Matrix. He sells both complete cyberdecks and their component parts, microtronic tools, conventional computers, software; you name anything related to decking, and he’s got a warehouse full of it. Deckmeisters deal almost exclusively with deckers, and most of them were once highly skilled deckers before the SOTA caught up with them. They then turned to a different way of making money from their knowledge of the Matrix.
Suggested skills: Equipment Acquisition (Electronics), Etiquette (Matrix), Etiquette (Street), Laundering, Negotiation, Private Enterprising (Electronics)
Suggested contacts’ affiliations: corporate, decker, street
Fence
The Fence is one of the archetypal fixers: he buys and sells goods. Some will specialize in certain things only, such as weapons, information, cars, or what you care to name, but most simply deal in anything they think will net them a nice profit. Most fences have extensive connections out of the shadows and in the underworld, but most commonly with gangs and petty crooks-those are the people who generally have things for sale that a Fence can buy cheap and sell for a lot more. Fences deal with shadowrunners sometimes, but usually as the seller to them: most runners have pre-set arrangements about selling the things they got from their runs.
Suggested skills: Equipment Acquisition, Evaluate, Etiquette (Street), Laundering, Negotiation, Private Enterprising
Suggested contacts’ affiliations: gang, street
Special rules: the Fence doesn’t need to Concentrate in Equipment Acquisition and Private Enterprising skills, but at the cost that all his target numbers for these skills go up by +1 (open-ended rolls have the highest roll reduced by -1). Fences who do take a Concentration do not apply the +1 to rolls in that Concentration only.
This represents the fact that Fences can get almost anything, but because they lack the specialist connections that most other fixers have, they can’t find it as easily as their colleagues.
Free Trader
Also known as “smugglers”, Free Traders buy things in one country, ship them to another country where they are more expensive, and sell them there. Seattle has a high number of Free Traders, because of its position on the Pacific Rim and in the middle of the NAN, while Denver has even more-the situation there is just about their ultimate breeding ground.
Free Traders often have their own transportation, ranging from not more than a civilian car or van, to a full-fledged T-bird if they do well enough and think they can get away with it. Most civilian vehicles are heavily modified to create hidden storage spaces, and have beefed-up engines so they can out-run law enforcement vehicles if they need to.
Suggested skills: Equipment Acquisition, Etiquette (Street), Laundering, Negotiation, Private Enterprising, a Vehicle skill
Suggested contacts’ affiliations: corporate, criminal, government, street
Special rules: Free Traders must take contacts in at least two countries.
Information Broker
Where most fixers trade in goods, Information Brokers (or “info bros” in street lingo) sell data, ideas, and other intangible merchandise. Any data is worth something to somebody, as deckers well know-the concept of “paydata” is what gave rise to Info Bros existence in all of the world’s sprawls. The trouble with being an Information Broker is that data ages very fast in the modern world-you may have a chip with data that’s worth millions today, and by the day after tomorrow the chip might be worth more than its contents. For this reason, Information Brokers tend to work fast, often selling to the first serious bidder rather than waiting for the highest.
Suggested skills: Etiquette (any and all), Interrogation, Laundering, Negotiation, Private Enterprising (Information)
Suggested contacts’ affiliations: any
Special rules: Information Brokers substitute the average of all their Etiquette skills (rounded to the nearest whole number) for Equipment Acquisition skill in these rules.
Loanshark
People are always in need of money, and the Loanshark provides them with just that when they have nowhere else to turn to for it. At gigantic interest rates, of course, and if you don’t (or can’t) pay, some of his goons will drop by and break a few of your major bones. That’s about it, really.
Suggested skills: Etiquette (Corporate), Etiquette (Street), Laundering, Negotiation, Private Enterprising
Suggested contacts’ affiliations: corporate, criminal, gang, street
Special rules: Loansharks get to use Negotiation instead of Equipment Acquisition skill.
Note: Loansharks are not really suitable as player characters, because of their limited scope. This is not to say that players cannot choose to become one, it is just a recommendation, from a gaming point of view, that they do not.
Middle Man
The Middle Man is the fixer shadowrunners deal with most of the time. He (or she, of course) has connections all over the Sprawl, and mediates between two parties that need each other somehow. In most cases, that means Mr. Johnsons and shadowrunners-if Mr. J needs a run set up, he or she gives a call to a Middle Man, who in turn will contact the shadowrunners he thinks will be best suited for the job. Johnson pays the Middle Man a certain amount, who then pays as little of it as he thinks he can get away with, to the shadowrunners.
Middle Men sometimes also function as negotiators between parties that need to work out their differences somehow, and/or provides them with a secure place where they can meet.
Suggested skills: Etiquette (as many as possible), Laundering, Negotiation
Suggested contacts’ affiliations: any
Special rules: the Middle Man uses Negotiation skill in place of Private Enterprising, and the average (rounded nearest) of his Etiquette skills instead of Equipment Acquisition.
Pusher
Pushers sell (“push”) drugs and BTLs to addicts. They buy their wares from drug cartels operating out of South America and Asia, or from chip manufacturers from Asia, Europe, or North America, increase the price a good deal, and sell them on. A pusher is often the last link in a vast network of smugglers, middle men, and fences, as well as the Mafia, the Yakuza, legitimate businessmen, and/or other organized criminals.
Pushers often double as Fences, because many of their customers don’t have the hard nuyen to pay with-instead, they trade a couple of car stereos or some antique jewelry against a shot of their favorite drug or chip.
Suggested skills: Equipment Acquisition (Narcotics/BTLs), Etiquette (Criminal), Etiquette (Street), Laundering, Negotiation, Private Enterprising (Narcotics/BTLs)
Suggested contacts’ affiliations: criminal, gang, street
Talismonger
Are Talismongers fixers?
You still need to ask?
Talismongers buy and sell magical supplies, and a good deal of that often consists of black-market equipment that requires a license or permit to own. Since many magicians in the shadows wouldn’t dare apply for one, and figure that making their own is too much time and effort, they buy one off a Talismonger. How the Talismonger got his hands on it is not a question that gets asked a lot, except perhaps by Lone Star.
Many talismongers are magically active, but only as semi-trained adepts; not many are full mages or shamans-those can make much more nuyen in the shadows or the corps. They also make foci and fetishes to sell in their shops, an activity for which it is not necessary to be a full-fledged magician.
Suggested skills: Equipment Acquisition (Magical), Evaluate (Magical), Etiquette (Magical), Negotiation, Private Enterprising (Magical)
Suggested contacts’ affiliations: magical
Special rules: Talismongers receive a -1 target number modifier to the Availability of any magical gear.
Recommended Reading
Or: what I used to write the above, and/or got ideas from.
- Wildside: The Cyberpunk Sourcebook For The Street - Benjamin Wright & Mike Roter (published by R. Talsorian Games as #3271, 1993, ISBN 0-937279-42-0)
- My imagination (come read the inside of my head, everyone! :)