Runners are the warrior elite, the gunslingers, the ronin, the knights-errant of the almost lawless society that they live in. It is a career that is often short, but which offers the promise of fame, glory, wealth, and even power for those who are successful at it.
In a setting where the vast majority of "legit" jobs involve being a salaryman (often referred to sneeringly as "the walking dead" by Runners) for some huge impersonal megacorporation, some get into Running just for the promise of freedom it offers.
Others want the fame or street cred depending on what strata of missions they are qualified for. Still others are just by nature violent or adrenaline junkies and find Running a paid outlet. And some, such as prior military and sec-forces people, really have no other marketable job skills. Oh... and let's not forget the Runners that are in it solely for the money.
Running pays well. If you survive. Of course, once you factor in the cost of equipment, additional training, maintaining a certain amount of personal security or anonymity vs. reprisals, and the inevitable cost of medical care, it's not as lucrative as it seems on the surface.
Still, an average runner with a few successes under their belt that knows how to barter respectably can pull down more from a single job than a salaryman of parallel stature could earn in a year of work. If a Runner can keep their expenses down, they can live a comfortable existence on two ideal jobs a year. The problem is finding such cush jobs, because there are few of them and plenty of other Runners that want them.
In practice, Runners often need to do several smaller-scale jobs, or else take on big, dangerous, high-paying jobs as part of a team of Runners. That's where the real money is at; jobs so complex, risky, big, requiring disparate skills, or multipronged (or some mixture thereof) that it requires a group of Runners. There is a nice premium worked into the going rate for this type of job, and the most high-profile of such are the bailiwick of the very best Runners.
Occasionally teams are assembled as needed by a Fixer calling on several Runners that they have built up a certain amount of trust with over time, but the larger the team the less practical this becomes. In the dangerous and violent reality of Running big jobs, familiarity with one's teammates is not only a bonus, it's often all that stands between success and failure.
Thus, teams of Runners that have worked and/or trained together previously are a valuable commodity and most Runners have some team affiliation. Some teams are exclusive, meaning individual members only do jobs within the framework of the team. Others are much looser, and some are no more than a collection of loners that can tolerate working with each other on a repetitive basis as convenience or circumstances require.
There are no degrees or formal certifications in the shadows; Runner hierarchy is dictated entirely by street cred. While "it's all about the skills" is a popular truism, reputation and survival experience almost always matter more. Given the choice between a perfectly skilled rookie and a fuzzily skilled veteran, a Fixer will reliably hire the veteran. Too much goes wrong on a Run for raw skill to compensate for fatal rookie mistakes.
According to the vast empirical and anecdotal experience of the city's Fixers, the career arc of a Runner follows a very predictable—and brutal—statistical curve:
Some Runners beat the odds by sticking to jobs that are easy for them, managing their risk profiles, and not falling victim to ego or being splashy.
Sometimes a Runner's reputation outpaces their actual reality. On the street, this is perfectly fine—so long as the Runner doesn't start believing their own hype and accepting jobs they can't walk away from.
Any schmuck can pick up a gun and claim to be a Runner, but there's more to the profession than toting hardware. In addition to the basic requirements of competency, which mortality rates sort out, there are also some unwritten rules that apply to the trade. More of an informal code than actual rules really, but nevertheless those who violate them will likely encounter difficulties when dealing with other Runners, Fixers, and Suppliers.
The rules are simple: