New to the game, looking at the rulebook and wondering:
If a normal run is a 2-3 cred wager, and restocking ammo or rebuilding a deck is expected to cost at least 2 cred, and you’re not guaranteed to win that wager, how is every run not just a cred death spiral?
Or do people choose to play loose with the costs of keeping your equipment up?
I struggle with that as well. You don’t even mention the ‘Hit the streets’ costs that come up most games. There is often special gear you need to complete a mission. I’d say in our group we average 1-3 cred in expenses each mission with the occasional 4 cred expense. We use a ‘credbank’ for the special gear each mission so one person doesn’t end up spending 4 cred by themselves for shared gear.
You can often choose ‘pays well’ in the Getting the Job move which helps that. Potentially if you wager 3 cred and choose ‘pays well’ you will get +6 cred for the mission, minus expenses.
You don’t need to re-up on ammunition and things like that. You don’t keep track of ammo at all really. I’d even think if you bought ‘some grenades’ that they would last a while.
Restocking ammo? I think you might be thinking of buying specialty ammo. I don’t recall any rules for restocking vanilla ammunition. Ammo is listed as 1 cred (page 128), but I haven’t made PCs pay for regular ammo. 2 Cred is basically an assault rifle / automatic shotgun with vanilla ammo. 1 cred would be a pistol with ammo. Or gel rounds, AP rounds, etc.
Also ICE doesn’t have to attack the decker’s deck. There’s a lot to be said for setting off alarms, advancing clocks, and tracing them so that a security team can knock on her door with a portable pneumatic battering ram.
I was thinking of the “ammo as 1 cred” from pg 128, yeah, which is what made runs look unbearably expensive to me.
As to the decker, I wasn’t just thinking of damaging the cyberdeck in terms of ratings, but also the “Burned programs” (pg 137), which cost 2 cred a piece to replace.
Ammo as one cred is in there because there are a ton of specialty ammunition. I mean, if AP ammo for your SMG costs one cred, why would vanilla ammo cost one cred? Seems like one of those things is vastly overpriced. Likewise, if a player pays 1 cred for a pistol, are you having that player pay an additional cred for bullets? These are the kinds of things you can do, if you want to, but if it’s not fun, seems like an easy solution is just ‘I don’t care about you buying vanilla ammo.’ Just like how I haven’t had the Driver pay for gas / nuclear fuel pellets embedded in carbon nanotube balls.
I mean, between-mission healing is handwaved, and you can basically let the runners come back to the next mission fresh and fit to go. If between-mission medical care is handwaved, I think things like vanilla ammo, rent, gas, are largely handwaved, unless it’s part of an MC move to ratchet tension, given appropriate tags and the like.
If you have a decker, there’s probably going to be counter-deckers, eh? Why not give the group opportunities (pristine cyberdeck), with cost (in a security kiosk with guards). I’ve only run one session with a decker so far, and Console Cowboy and good rolls kept him out of trouble (along with me forgetting to use a hard move when he failed a paydata search). But I’m not expecting that playbook or its gear to be a hidden pit of unfun, inevitable failure.
Seems like some pretty good answers in this thread already so I’ll approach from a different angle: If players are having money issues offer some too good to be true loans.
Huge Debt and owing favors is as much apart of the cyberpunk genre as metal body parts and neon signs.
Being near-broke in the Sprawl, having to do things you don’t want to do to make creds, these fit the genre pretty darn well.
Also, as I mentioned in another thread +Gear can give you some pretty useful stuff if it fit’s in the story. Oh, you know those guards we disabled before? I took their ammo (for after you have rolled terribly on a mix it up and the GM rules that your gun is out of ammo) You an often get a discount on stuff or even get it for free when you spend Gear or hit the streets with a well known contact.
I would personally let regular equipment upkeep for the player be paid for with 1 cred per player. This is everything, guns, armor, doss, vehicle maintenance, etc. Anything that doesn’t fall within that norm (Significant cost) gets a higher price tag, but I wouldn’t force players into too much book keeping, there are plenty of other games that do it and do it much better.
I am just starting out :). Seems to me that basic maintenance and supplies is part of the stake. I would charge a cost for anything significant though.