BP for stuff that's very easily gained or lost during play (jobs, debts) are awkward game design. I think the more permanent qualities (Lucky, Scorched) make much more sense. They also feel like they're more innate to the character, not external like Day Job or Debt.

If their qualities change (debt is paid off, fired from job, etc) simply replace them with new negative qualities. Maybe an old coworker gets spiteful and turns evidence to the police (Wanted) or a corp (enemy) showing the character doing some illegal running activity. Maybe they develop a gambling habit, or a distant relative dies leaving them as the only one to care for a neice, cousin, or grandparent. Its easy to find negative qualities that would pop up after character creation, and simple to use these to replace old qualities that no longer apply.

I don't like that. If you resolved some IC thing through play, you shouldn't also have to pay karma to get rid of it.

For example, Debt: what that amounts to is basically this -
1) You have an actual debt, which you got money for during CharGen.
2) You have a mysterious negative quality; if you were to pay off (1), then it'd suddenly turn into an actual NQ. So not clearing (1) is better than clearing (1) and not paying the karma.

Also, suppose you took a loan with someone during the game; would you suddenly get NQ:Debt? Do you get Karma for that? Or does taking a loan mean you basically lose karma in the long run?


It's clunky.. I prefer qualities to be permanent traits of the character, not circumstances that can quickly change, all the while having karma consequences.

There's also the alternate interpretation of "1 BP = 5000 nuyen" in the case of the debt. Pay it off, then you've already paid the cost for it, leaving time for hookers and ice cream! But quitting a day job, you lose the income AND the drain on your time, and depending on when and how you quit, it may make you a suspicious person, or bring down other negative repercussions (tainting your real or fake SIN).

Maybe things like Debts, Day Jobs, SINs and such would have been better handled by treating them as an exotic form of equipment, like Lifestyle.

For me, I restrict them because it's easier. I don't exactly ban SURGE, I just need a very good reason before I allow it. So far, I haven't encountered one, but I do leave the door open. My players do know to not touch that section of RC without asking me first, so it works out. Incompetence is the same way: if there's a valid reason for it, and it's a reasonable limitation, I'll allow it. For example, the mage with Incompetence: Banishing. Banishing is really a useless skill, and the character would probably never use it anyway. But it does prevent the Pokemon trick, as well as several other cheese moves.


Again, I don't do that because it's easier to ban it than rejigger it. If a player absolutely needed more money for chargen, I'd already be worried about a potentially game-breaking character. I'm willing to work with players if it's not unreasonable, but I can't think of many unbroken character types that need more than 250,000 nuyen. And if they did have a good case for why they couldn't shave off a few pieces of gear here and there, I might even bend the rules and allow them to spend more BP on cash. In Debt, as it stands, has too many problems for me to really allow it, and there's ways of doing what you suggest without involving it.


If a player is cheesy enough to blow off a flaw like that, there's no reason why they won't do it again. I could slap them with increasingly severe flaws, but that becomes very punitive after a certain point. Really, it's better to avoid the whole mess than risk an escalation like that. That's the other reason I'm up-front about what I allow and what I don't: it warns me of potential problem players. If I say no, and they fight for it anyway, I know I have a possible problem brewing.

As for War!, my players knew it was trouble when one guy pointed to the PDF and said: "What's in that book?" The look on my face was probably priceless. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

The correct answer here is "a book of stuff for the GM for when the players epically fail".

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/vegm.gif)

Corrected your answer.

Well "need" is such a subjective think, for example my combat face character Sasha, has about 320k (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) worth of stuff and i really wouldn't call her broken(even thought she's about 1000 karma character in the errated karmagen), atleast not on the gear front, some people might cry wolf as she's a Dryad. She only throws 10-18 dice with all non exotic weapons and 11-16 dice for social skills.
Ofource if forced by GM i could easily drop that to below 300K (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) by ditching some of the fluff ware she has, most likely even to under 250k (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) , as it's not absolutely necessary to have 12 guns at the start of the game (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

To be honest, I've been around Dumpshock too long; every time I see a dryad face, a pornomancer alert goes off in the back of my mind. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) But seriously, I've built enough characters to know that you can do a lot with the starting 250,000 nuyen. I can build very nasty street samurai with that budget, so a player would have to show me why they can't get what they want within budget. I'm willing to listen, and I'm even willing to work with the player if they have a good reason. But rather than add a problematic flaw to give them cash, I'd probably bend the rule that says you can only spent 50 BP on resources. I honestly think it's much easier.

Here's two hypothetical examples. Bob the troll's sheet lands in front of me, and he's overspent on cyberware. He's got everything alphawared, and is somewhere around .01 Essence. The player wants to take In Debt so he can afford everything. I'm probably going to say no, simply because the troll is nasty enough with everything at standard grade; he won't need that much, even in my high-powered games. Then, I read the sheet for Jane the Weapon Specialist. She's well cybered too, but she's got an interesting backstory as the child of survivalists, is something of a gun nut, and likes to collect weapons. She's got every gun in the books in her collection: not because she plans on carrying them all at once, but because she's a collector. She wants a few thousand more nuyen to finsh her collection with the rest of the starting-legal guns. I'm more apt to say yes in this case, as the amounts are smaller; and rather than saddle her with a flaw that's hard to handle, I'll let her spend 1-5 more BP on resources.

If you really need more cash, there is the positive quality, Born Rich. It's effectively 2 BP per 5000Y that way (in addition to using up 10 quality points), but it's there.

I don't like the name of the quality, because I see resources as representing things that don't necessarily translate to wealth, even though you purchase them with your starting resources. Your street samurai with over 200K in 'ware might not have ever had 200,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) in cold, hard cash in hand, for example.

I do like the quality itself, though. I see it as the equivalent of exceptional Attribute or aptitude, only applied to resources. Along with the restricted gear quality, they make street samurai a bit more competitive with bioware-enhanced adepts.

Man I'm old. I remember my first Street Sam starting with 1,000,000Y. Of course that was SR (first edition) and the priority based creation system (the only one available at the time).

-D

Had a mage with Incompetent: Pilot Ground Vehicle a while back. From his backstory, his mother got gunned down in front of him during a mafia wars shootout in Chicago in the '50's, and this trauma was the reason for his incompetence. Admittedly as a mage he was more likely to use levitate and air spirit movement power to get places, but the way I played it he was distracted just being in a car, and I voluntarily took a -2 to all actions if he was in a car when the lead was flying.

As a GM, I want a backstory reason for an Incompetence, so Incompetence: Pilot Aerospace is out unless you take at least a point in the skill and have a trauma in your backstory to go with it.

As for other NQ, I tend to ban most RC NQ out of hand. Things like Enemy (for a runner to survive to the point of CG, they gotta have a few at least anyways) and Day Job are out. I will allow In Debt and won't require PC's to buy the debt off with karma as well as cash, but warn players that the people coming collecting are like the Sopranos. Until that debt is repayed, the mafia/yakuza/whatever goons will hassle the PC on a regular basis, and while they might know better than to slap a shadowrunner around, they won't be past trashing their apartments or taking that nice shiny assault rifle toy as a down payment. Should the PC be stupid enough to fight back, they will find themselves invited to meet the mafia boss and told that any further assault on any of his employees will not be tolerated, and that the assaultee's medical bills and a gratuity has been added to their debt. In other words, what they don't pay in karma they pay big time in inconvenience until the debt plus loan shark interest is fully repayed.

I have 2 Gnome Chars and 2 Hobbits.
All of them have Incompetence Heavy Weapons because of their physical Built

with a small Dance
Medicineman

Well, I see almost every PC mage/mystic adept in my games with Incompetence(Banishing/Ritual Spellcasting). So yeah, I guess those skills must be of limited value to PCs.

Banishing is a pretty useless skill to begin with, so it's mildly cheesy to take an Incompetence in it. But it's also fair, because the skill does have some use.

I restrict Incompetences, but not especially harshly. I prefer a backstory reason, but I'll accept a good mechanical one as well. I personally don't like the "group incompetences"-- Infirm, Uncouth, and Uneducated-- because they're too much drain for not enough gain, especially when compared to multiple Incompetences. Usually, I draw the line at multiple Incomptences, although there are exceptions. For example, I was considering an ex-Drill Sargent who had Incompetence: Etiquette, Con, and Negotiation, but had a high Leadership. That actually made sense to me.

True enough. I especially dislike that Uncouth applies to Intimidate.

Wouldn't Etiquette also cover proper salutes and forms of address towards superior officers?

I see that as a job duty, not a social nicety, and therefore I'd tuck it under knowledge skills. There's a fine line. The ability to convince someone you're an officer is Con, so while part of that may be saluting properly, the overall task is con. If you're getting to the specific point of "proper salutes and forms of address" that sounds either academic or professional to me.

Either Etiquette with military specialization, or a knowledge skill.

Eh. "Fitting in" is generally an Etiquette thing, and the military does go a lot for that. Actually getting promoted beyond Cannon Fodder duty gets a lot harder if you're an antisocial twerp with an Incompetence: Etiquette, too.

Well, part of the story I was designing was that he was eventually kicked out for making inappropriate comments about an officer's wife. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) He was a very good drill instructor, and that's why he kept his job so long. He never got promoted to officer status because he was too brusque off the training field; and like most sargents, he viewed officers as too removed from the action. In his mind, him and the boys were the ones doing the real work. I can just picture it now: "Did you just call me sir?! Do I look like an officer to you, boy? I WORK FOR A LIVING!!"

Well... MOST enlisted never, ever see Officer Rank, nor would they want to (So not being promoted from Sergeant to Officer is a perk). There is a Sharp divide between Enlisted ranks and Officer ranks, at least in the American Military. And I have often seen Senior NCO's with more pull and Leadership ability than the Officers around them.

NCO's lead, Officers "supervise".

I have noticed it depends on the age of the soldier, assuming one has a choice.

When you start pushing your 40s or 50s, that officer position with the cushy office starts looking more attractive. Either that or retirement.

Really, though, most don't get that choice. To get offered an officer position from enlisted ranks isn't that common. The US military at least seems to prefer officers drawn from colleges going straight to OCS.



-k