They might not be gods at 400BP, but they might be with 750 karma and after they earn enough to pay off the debt. I am not going to rehash the yakuza/mafia/some organised crime syndicate vs runners argument again, but given sufficient prowess, a runner can bury more than what is worth to try to bury him and still it might not bury him.

Why do people do dealings with shadowrunners? It happens, even the mafia get stupid, and it is common knowledge that shadowrunners kill people.

I think its hillarious such a simple, clear and cut issue has reached 4 pages.

- J.

I suspect that means its not clear cut. Just. ya know.

I personally think that dealing with the mafia, or the other types likely to make these kind of loans to shadowrunners, shouldn't be all tea and cookies. There should be risks involved, from catching their attention as possible "talent" to leverage in the future, to having the mid-level capo abscond with your recently paid-off loan. I'm not saying screw the player over at every opportunity, but there should be some danger involved. But if the character pays off the debt and the interest, I personally would be more likely to withhold Karma until the Karma cost is paid up, rather than either have the mafia engage in foolish brinksmanship, or resorting to increasingly contrived circumstances.

That's RAW - personally, I don't like how the system makes you essentially pay twice to buy off flaws, but I'm not sure how else it could be fair for people whose flaws are less fixable by direct actions.

[img]http://www.jalife.net/up/files/orly-ostrich.jpg[/img]

- J.

The power of the mafia, a gang, or a coporation at any table is entirely within the GMs reins. At my table I have generally run gangs as chumps, much less dangerous then they appear in any of the books. But I run OC as fairly nasty outfits to tangle with. I can guarantee you that my table I could very easily have the mob put the smack down on your most elite crack A-Team of runners if it suited my fancy. Of course as GM I have power of FIAT and could make calls from the sky on you as well if I liked.

So anyways, the relative competence of the runners vis-a-vie their competition is entirely table dependent. There is no universal law that the mob dare not mess with Shadowrunners, or that Shadowrunners must live in fear of the mob. I happen to think that fear of a bigger fish is an important part of Shadowrun. But if you want to play the biggest fish in the ponds, then by all means more power to you.

But I do think as a general rule you should also have to pay for the flaws you take. If being in debt (or any other flaw) suddenly cease to be a drawback for some reason. The GM should feel free to ask the character to buy it off with karma and/or introduce some other flaw of equal weight. It is also true though that if the GM feels sufficient work has been put into buying off a flaw (despite a lack of karma expenditure) he can wave it away, or have it paid back at a reduced cost. Whatever works.

You know, that should be the universal law of GMing. Whatever works.

If you explicitly choose not to pay the karma to buy off the flaw, you still owe that much money. Whatever justification the GM uses, you still owe that much money. If you don't have the karma on hand to buy it off, but have the nuyen and want to buy off the flaw, then the GM can obviously allow you to pay the debt and then just take the karma owed off whatever karma you earn until the karma is paid off. I'd also allow a player to reduce his level of In Debt by paying off both the difference in nuyen and the relevant amount of karma.

Oh, and if the mafia wants you dead, don't expect them to necessarily send a bunch of goons to off you. Nothing says "drop dead" like a sniper round to the head. Nothing says "you shouldn't have messed with us" like a bomb in your bed. Nothing says "retribution" like Ringu in your soap dispensor.

And all of that goes same for the mafia don.

The universal law of GMing is keep your players happy.

This is explicitly stated for some other flaws (I don't have the books in front of me at the moment so I can't look up which). If circumstances render it irrelevant, replace it with another flaw of equal BP of the GMs choice. So you pay off all your debt, but maybe paying it off that fast causes you to be hung out to dry or something similar. You can pay it off with nuyen only, but you still have the same amount of flaws afterwards.

I think everyone should be having fun, not just the players.

Here' I'll fix this problem for you guys.

Starting character buys R2 Fake SIN. Gets 30 BP of In Debt. Gets his 30,000 nY. Links his In Debt quality to his Fake SIN (Fake SIN of an Ares employee, got an advanced payday loan or something). In game, immediately burns his SIN. Burning a SIN removes all legal debts.

Fin.

Now for clarification's sake, the character would still have the debt, but no-one would be looking for him. Ever. He wouldn't be able to get rid of the Karmic Debt unless he bought off the quality. But Ares would never look for him. It'd only come into play if Ares ever got his bio-data again, and cross-referenced it through a lot of databases and backup systems. Then they might find it.

There is a difference between burning the SIN the debt is attached to and actually using money made from runningto pay off the debt, at least in my mind. One is an accounting trick, the other is legitimately paying off the debt.

I had a character pay off an Debt of 15,000 + the interest after one really really lucky run where we found some unrelated but highly lucrative items, then again the character is a face with 24 Dice in Netotiation and Ettiquette and I made 8-10 hits on the test the GM required.

If it is all this stuff about just burning a fake sin and bla bla bla just give every player at the table an extra starting 30k and 30 bp and tell them they can't take the flaw. As a GM it is important for your playerS to have fun not player. If not everyone has this flaw there will be players who are bitter that they were not able to have the flaw themselves. It is a power creep and generally someone will cause of a fuss about how they were able to take the total cheese flaw and how they were not able to take it. It then makes for a bitter gaming table. That is why a flaw like this sucks, because it makes for hard feelings amongst those who took flaws that were not nearly as amazing as this one. As a GM if someone wants it why not just give it to everyone and be done with it. You can then at least use it as a plot device and have some fun with it.

However if you are taking a large loan out I am sure the loan company will get your biometrics before handing out the loan so the fake SIN will only get you so far because if your blood ever splatters on a wall and you don't clean it up.... well you know... I mean biometrics is about the only way that someone could safely track you.

Me I would think of replacing debt with a flaw such as enemy or records on file + some thing may be both. Just a few small ones. May be by paying back the debt to the yaks my elf runner pisses off some orf the more anti meta yaks who then try and mess with him. Also here is an idea an odd one but may be to stop them paying it all off they lender offers another lone that this time has strings attached (these are the new flaws and the lone can be made up with other IC things for the other players)

That's an excellent suggestion... just it seems to be non-missions compliant... which was the source of the problem for me. I think what I'll try to do is talk the players who have in debt out of paying it off in a purely metagame reasoning.

i.e. Well ok.. you just paid 49,500 nuyen of in debt + interest off... which is 10 bp worth of cash.. I'll take that and discount the 30bp flaw... and the next 40 karma you gain will have to be spent removing the debt before you can improve your mystical adept, gun bunny adept, etc.. If they complain... I'll point out the rule that says they have to pay the whole thing off with karma if they make it go away. It seems like a fair balance to me.

sounds good to me

What happens if the character has Erased?

QQ QQ

then I wouldn't give them that quality or make it one group who know of the paper records or offline store.

I'm reading this and the quality says owes them that much plus 50%. It does not say it owes them that much plus 50% plus 1karma per 2500. The general rule is the specific overrides the general when the specific is given.

I think the bigger problem is people pulling some outlandish rewards. I don't know the scenerio in question but a hot chopper is salable sure. Now how big is the market for it? You can get that much but in how much time? How many of your customers have that much scratch laying around to buy it in a hurry! Point is to have fun for everyone... which sometimes means making things a little difficult (nobody appreciates anything which they don't have to work for a bit!).

Personally, I think the quality is one of the better ones in RC. It gives a good in-character reason for why the character is running if played well. It segue's well w/ contacts and backstory. And just because you paid off the bill doesn't mean that you weren't in-debt (and the debtor might have say some tissue samples or the like in use for ritual magic or the like, hell he may come back and blackmail the runner. Or someone hunting down the runner might learn about it and find some way to work that backtrail in their favour). IMO the problem isn't w/ the quality, it's w/ the GM going monty haul. (reading the chopper bit, just has me shaking my head... longshot rule was misapplied IMO).


Lets put this in perspective... 4500 a month is practically a medium lifestyle. Now toss out your actual living costs, and other ongoing costs.

For example, I had drawn up a dwarf hacking adept smuggler. Unfortunately I only got a chance to play him once.
His backstory was he was doing well as a smuggler til he nearly got killed and had to get some cyber (alpha grade cyberlimb). I more or less used the quality to buy the cyberlimb and then put him in hoc to the guys whose shipment got lost. (anyone familiar w/ the old battletech term 'the company store'). By the time I had run the numbers... low lifestyle (he lived in his garage drone workshop)... he needed something like 10000 a month just to pay the bills!!! (cracked software upkeep, debt, low lifestyle(spoofed up when necessary for appearances sake). And unfortunately, I only managed to play him one session. But that was a LOT of money which wasn't going into new drones (he had his vehicle, a doberman, and that aerial supply drone... that was it). His reason for running quite simply... in order to make enough money for a low lifestyle, he needed to make enough money a month to afford a high lifestyle just to get himself out of debt. (and he also had the erased quality, not that it'd help him if he tried to renege on the debt against someone w/ a ritual magic biosample).


For a game which goes on for a while, this quality can easily cost the character well over 100,000. 10% per month is an INSANE rate of interest, as others have pointed out that works out to 214% annualized! Maybe this is just me, but I'm used to seeing runs which pay 15000 total... which then gets split 3-5 ways after expenses. Or which are more like the PI rates in the old detective films... well our rate is X per day plus expenses.


If you're running a game where the amount owed isn't in line w/ your games power level. Then you should probably increase the amount owed or disallow the quality. Not pull this silliness of now spend karma in addition to paying off the loan. If the character was to get a starting loan first thing in play, you wouldn't make him pay karma even if the loanshark's terms are equivalent.

Oh sure, the GM is always welcome to play with himself.

If the character gets a loan in game he isn't gaining karma for taking the loan, whereas he does gain build points if he takes the negative quality In Debt. This difference is why the character needs to pay karma to get rid of the negative quality. (Note, if the player really wants to (with GM permission), he could always opt to pay off the nuyen owed and have the quality changed to an equal value of other negative qualities.)

Actually after careful reading, there is nothing in the description that says you actually need to or even can repay the principal sum. You just need to pay at least the interest each month. And here is where it gets ambigous, does the additional payment(over the interest) go towards reducing the principal sum or does it not?

Strictly speaking, by RAW, however, the PC need never pay the interest. So the debt collector comes to collect, but it is never stated that the PC needs to pay, just that the consequence of not paying is stated. Indeed, it can even be that the debt simply accrues(because the debtor never sends anyone to collect since per description it is "may send someone") and is never actually paid off and the flaw is simply bought off like any other flaw.