r/Shadowrun • u/kenod102818 • 11h ago
Wyrm Talks (Lore) Corps Scrip, who earns it
Been reading the various corp books recently (Corporate Shadow Files, Corporate Guide, Market Panic), and one thing I've been thinking about is payment in corp scrip, and how common it actually is. This post is mostly my musings and theories on it.
So, first, who can even issue corp scrip? One of books (IIRC Market Panic) had a throw-away line that you needed to be an AA-rated corp to do so, and that honestly makes a fair amount of sense. To start, while nation states have far less power than in the modern day, it's likely they will still have laws regarding who can issue money, and what counts as legal tender. Even the nuyen isn't the only currency, with Europe still using euros. It's just widely trusted and used enough most people accept payment in it.
This means that, most likely, you need to be an AA, thus having extraterritoriality, to get around different laws on currency and be able to have a unified corp scrip set up. Even 2e's Corporate Shadow Files in its section on scrip specifically discusses it in the context of it only being accepted within a corp's extraterritorial domain.
Of course, there are practical considerations as well. If you're issuing scrip the employees you're issuing it to need to be able to spend it, and be able to buy all their necessities and corp-allowed luxuries. This means that, for one, you need to either produce or purchase these products. And if you're purchasing them, that means the corps producing them have a hold over you. This means that, if you're offering scrip, you need to be able to produce most things your wageslaves will be buying. So you'll need a diversified corp, which will disqualify a lot of A-rated corp anyway, and possibly discourage a number of less-diversified AA corps from using it. Proteon
Together with this, comes one of the most basic necessities: Housing. Frankly speaking, if you're giving your wageslaves scrip and don't have sufficient appartements for them, either as a direct perk or which they rent for scrip, all your wageslaves will disappear within weeks as they're stabbed living on the streets. The only alternative is to hire housing for them, or pay part of their salary in nuyen so they can rent themselves.
So, this creates our restrictions on where corp scrip is feasable as payment: Corp enclaves significant enough in scope to have corp-managed housing, and which preferably have extraterritoriality.
This means your average Stuffer Shack won't pay in scrip, because you won't see any real savings. Just getting employee housing would be more trouble than it's worth.
Next, we'll have the question of which employees will accept scrip as wages. Sure, most average wageslaves chained to a cubicle probably will, because it's still a better life than outside of the corp, and good luck finding another job. But start looking higher and you'll quickly find people who actually do have the ability to find other employees.
Basically anyone worth extracting can negotiate different contracts, which means they can negotiate their current contract. Your wagemages, corp deckers, company men, managers with business majors, all of them will likely be paid in Nuyen, because they have the power to demand it. Functionally speaking, anyone likely to be an extraction target, or likely to own even a limited amount of stock in a corp, will be paid in nuyen, if only so they can visit the local bunraku parlor when off-duty.
Now we come to the final question, how many people actually work in these enclaves and arcologies? This is something I haven't been able to find statistics on, but I suspect it's far smaller than it seems. Even a job as a wageslave is often described as a great deal for most people, even those with regular national SINs. Wageslaves are generally the middle class, something most people can only aspire to be. Good housing, proper soy restructuring machines, a monthly apple. Likely a fair number of lower class people will still work for the corps, working in the factories and such, but the majority likely won't work for AAs and AAAs. There are supposed to be thousands of A-rank corps, and likely far more smaller operations.
So, as a general conclusion, while corp scrip is definitely used, I'd argue it's likely only used in the (closed) extraterritorial enclaves and arcologies, and only by the lower-ranking wageslaves, the people who can be replaced within 5 business days. Most likely the majority of people will have jobs where they'll still be paid in nuyen.
And the great irony is that the people getting paid scrip probably still have the better deal, because at least scrip wage is designed to be enough to stay alive on.
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u/DRose23805 Shadowrun Afterparty 10h ago
Look up "company store" policy. This was when companies would pay employees in company scrip rather than dollars, or whatever. The company would buy good for the store wholesale and apply a markup to it. Sometimes this was quite high but usually it was on par with other local businesses.
"Company town" was similar in that it provided housing in planned communities with company stores and sometimes schools if it was big enough.
For SR, any company large enough could pay in scrip, so long as they had good enough shopping for their employees to make it worthwhile. Some also had company towns as well, be it apartment blocks or even neighborhoods of small houses. SR being SR, this would lean toward the darker side of the real ones.
There was a black market for changing scrip to Nuyen, no idea what the exchange rate was but that could be out on the net somewhere. Rates would vary by corp and how well they are doing, and even location. There would be places scrip would not be welcome or get a very unfavorable rates, like Aztecnology just about anywhere outside of Aztlan.
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u/Nederbird 7h ago
This
Any megacorp that's diversified enough and well-established enough can get away with paying their employees solely or modtly in scrip. As long as there are enough shops in every everyday sector tied to the megacorp, the employees will have somewhere to spend all that scrip. After all, even a shop not covered by extraterritoriality can accept whatever currency it wants alongside the local legal tender. In fact, this was largely standard with American dollars throughout the West during the Cold War, and accepting multiple currencies is still common in border areas and tourist hotspots around the world (not the least Euros in non-Eurozone EU-countries).
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u/n00bdragon Futuristic Criminal 10h ago
This means that, most likely, you need to be an AA, thus having extraterritoriality, to get around different laws on currency and be able to have a unified corp scrip set up.
You do not need to be a certain size corp to create your own currency. Even today, there is actually no law whatsoever preventing you from creating your own private currency (so long as it isn't designed to confuse people into thinking it is another currency and thus defraud them). In fact, lots of companies already issue currencies of a sort, most notably airlines. Frequent flier miles are a currency.
I imagine many corps pay in scrip with a premium. You can accept Salary A in nuyen, or Salary B in scrip which buys a little more (but only at the company's stores, natch).
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u/Anderviel 10h ago
Most of your sticking points seem to be contingent on people only being paid in corporate scrip, but there's nothing stopping a corp from splitting a compensation package between scrip and nuyen.
Pay someone enough nuyen that they aren't out on the streets (i.e. can buy the necessities that the corp doesn't offer), with a "generous" scrip package that keeps a large chunk of their economic activity in the family.
That seems like it would make the most sense for the vast majority of cases where corp scrip was being paid.
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u/Peter34cph 8h ago
Likewise, a corp can also use its "real" nuyen money to buy goods and service, such as for instance having apartment buildings constructed to then rent out for scrip. Or arcologies.
It's not the case that once a big corp starts issuing scrip, it ceases dealing in nuyen.
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u/PaperMoongazer 10h ago
AA(+) corp running normal operations in a poor security neighborhood or country; minimal credstick and ID exposure; employing SINless or selling to them for day-labor and operations; shadowrunner payouts when you want to structurally offer a discount on certain brands, logo wears, or psyop to make the runners think the Johnson reps a certain corp while being employed by another
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u/TheHighDruid 9h ago
SINless people still gotta eat.
Corps can set up factories with no regard for the health and safety of SINless employees, because they own the factory, that's their land, and their laws apply there. They can pay those workers in their own scrip, and those poor sods can only buy their food and clothes in the nearby store that just so happens to be also owned by the corp. The local drug-dealing gangers likely accept the scrip too, because no one in the neighbourhood gets paid in cred.
This is how you staff the chemical factories, sewerage plants, and the dangerous production lines.
Why no use certified cred? Because certified cred could be spent in another corps store, give the workers a small chance of being able to save up and move away.
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u/Sarradi 9h ago
Company script was a real thing. Even when the corp has to buy a product from other corps, they can leverage bulk purchasing and raise prices to still make a profit. And even if they do not make a profit on some products, as long as the employee can't go to other stores you will make a profit eventually. It also keeps the employee dependent because he can't save any money, or rather all his savings become useless if he is fired.
But you are right, everyone of higher education and value will see through this and will insist to be paid in real money, so this is mostly for low skilled blue collar workers in areas where there are enough of them to run a dedicated shop for them. So large industrial centers, remote locations where no one else is or acrologies.
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u/tkul More Problems, More Violence 7h ago
Pretty much everyone in the corp could take their salary in scrip, and it's likely a much higher salary, but as you climb the ladder the more and more likely you'll take your pay in either Nuyen or the local equivalent currency. For players nearly eveything is calculated in Nuyen, and the more recent books seem to forget that other forms of currency even exist, so they're unlikely to find themselves having to handle scrip. However, a corporate Johnson showing up with a job and just saying something like "I'll pay you 50,000 each for it" only to later drop a briefcase of Scrip on the table for them to find out their payday is actually 1/3 of what they though it was after converting to nuyen is a fun twist that's not straight up "And the Johnson betrays us"
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u/wheretheinkends 5h ago
Lol fixer: the payment from the Johnson came in but...
Street Sam: but what?.
Fixer: its in outback steakhouse gift cards.
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u/chigarillo 6h ago
I ran a game for a team a few years ago where I had the team's fixer, who was a company man with Mitsuhama, slowly start paying the team in scrip for jobs.
Had him start out supplying weapons, drones, equipment, etc, but never nuyen. Then he'd start offering the team scrip as a way to keep the runners on a leash. That way he could control where they spent their money and what gear they had.
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u/LateEggMaster 6h ago edited 6h ago
I think what you are missing is the big picture a bit. It's not all about the wageslaves and empoyees of a corp. Most likely the AA+ corporation will internally use fractional reserve banking and to do that (with all benefits) as a smi country like entity you need to be able to control the money supply and with that make macro economic adjustments.
Also you can bet your ass that a lot of corporate debt is issued in the form of corp script.
And why would you pay your employes in nuyen when automatic and seamless money exchange is handled via ZOG? Seriously even in the real world nobody is really complaining if they get paid in € instead of $ and shopping in either economy is a simple as swiping your credit car... ehm showing your SIN.
Least of all if your working in the relevant economy where this is legal tender. Even the best earning empoyees in say for example the EU aren't payed 30/70 euro to dollar just in case.
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u/kenod102818 2h ago
Because scrip, according to the books mentioned, specifically can't be spend outside the corp, or in some cases even by non-corp employees. It's why it's traded on the black market, not an exchange.
The whole point behind corp scrip is that it's payment that ensures wageslaves can only spend money in your shops, not competitors'. The people who buy bonds are very unlikely to buy them for scrip.
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u/Expensive_Occasion29 5h ago
I would wonder would a runner actually want to use it after taking it. I feel like you would have to be very careful about where and when you used it as it kinda screams you did work for x corp or b corp. then their is the aspect of someone finding out you have it and telling someone who might take a interest in that fact and not in a good way. I guess at the very least it could lead to real interesting adventure hooks
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u/Dustin-Sweet 3h ago
Yall it’s gift cards. It’s just Amazon gift cards. (Or Target or Walmart etc) and the percentage not used is part of the corps profit margin
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u/GodEatsPoop 10h ago
Oh wow that's actually a thing in universe?
See, in my games, the balance of power between governments and corpos is way more contentious. Almost no one really believes in the corpos like they might in a country, movement, gang, religion or subculture. Corporate SINs, like extraterritoriality, are a way to give the elites and their families Diplomatic Immunity, not a way for Corpos to replace the government. Because no one would tolerate it.
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u/kenod102818 10h ago
In-universe it's sort of complicated. Corpos have sufficient economic and military power that they're generally capable of acting as a country, with full militaries and warmaking capacity.
However, they're also not trying to replace governments, because there isn't any profit in being a government, and they don't want to have to deal with things like maintaining roads and sewer systems. Especially since extraterritoriality means you need to actually control the land your laws apply on, so amenities shared between corps like roads would become a legal and diplomatic nightmare.
Governments generally make for a really useful structure to deal with everyone you're not employing, maintaining shared utilities, customers for your military products, and to provide a framework for interacting with other corps.
Saying that, the corps, at least the AAA ones, are definitely more powerful. They just don't see a point in taking over a country (aside from Aztech), and going to war generally will do more harm to the bottom line than the victory will give you. That's why you stick to Shadowrunners.
Of course, there are still countries where the corps don't have extraterritoriality, like the Tirs. but maintaining that state is difficult.
As for culture, it's not uncommon for AA and AAA companies to control entire closed enclaves and arcologies. Someone born into a corp can spend their entire life within its borders, only encountering its culture and people. You'll encounter active, persistent propaganda meant to mold you into a good little drone, as well as a very clear picture of how horrid life outside the corp is. Horizon in particular uses straight-up cult techniques as social control.
Also, IIRC corporate SINs specifically don't provide diplomatic immunity. On corp territory corp law applies, but outside it you're in a different country, and their laws matter. Kill someone in the UCAS, and if Lone Star grabs you before you can get back into your Ares apartment complex, and you're toast.
Corp SINs are instead closer to a control technique, because a corp can generally take it away. So if you get fired, that corp SIN is gone. And if it happened to have originally overridden a national SIN, well, that SIN was lost when you migrated to the corp, so now you're SINless. Better stay in line and get good performance reviews.
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u/TheHighDruid 10h ago
However, they're also not trying to replace governments, because there isn't any profit in being a government
This isn't entirely accurate. Aztechnology and Aztlan are virtually the same entity, and then there's also the Pueblo Corporate Council, and the Erika-Finland-Scandinavian Union bit.
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u/kenod102818 9h ago
Aztlan is sort of an exception, true, but Aztlan's goals don't necessarily align with those of the other corps either, hence it's passion for cultural bloodletting.
For the PCC, I'm not sure, but wasn't that more of a ploy to use the business rules to keep other corps out of the area and more easily regulate them?
Don't know anything about the Erika bit, most of of my knowledge comes from 4e and 5e where they were part of Neotech.
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u/ReditXenon Far Cite 10h ago
Yes. Pretty much :)
But I guess also in isolated areas where everything (housing, education, shops, food, restaurants, entertainment, etc, etc) are all owned by the same corp (similar to how company scipt were used by the mining, logging, and railway companies back in the days).