That's not very fair. The majority of Missions GMs that I've encountered don't get a lot of time to review the adventure before it's put into their hands at a convention (where most of examples in this thread take place). If I were put in that position, I wouldn't stray far off the path either.

There have been cases where we (the players) roll our eyes at the written text when it's a railroad, but we don't blame the GM (or his skills). In fact, I would hazard a guess that if I were a Missions GM, and my players had some crazy stuff on their certs from events that I had run for them, there might be a few questions thrown my way by the Missions coordinators.

Robert (aka Spanner)

There are many ways to be in debt. You could be in debt to an illegal organization such as the Yakuza, whose contacts are far more reaching than yours. You could also assume that if you are taking 5k debt then the person you are in debt to has 1 connection rating. This means 30k has a 6 connection rating. You can't exactly run from that, it will catch you.

Also keep in mind that Shadowrun is very much a roleplaying game. Taking in debt is for roleplaying and just to make a difficult backstory. We all like BP (or Karma), but building a character with extensive debt can be fun for the roleplaying value as well as the BP value.

And paying off the debt where you loaned me 30k and I paid you almost 50k (45k + 10% interest) less than 30 days after I got it... is good business.

Sorry if I can make 60% ROI in less than a month and can get the cash in hand, it's paid off, we shake hands, and walk away.

I mean, I just loaned money to a shadowrunner, who paid me back instead of:
1. ditching his identity and buying a new one.
2. dieing... if he's dead, I certainly won't get my money back.

After all it's biz... and I've got cash in hand that I can spend... or loan to somebody else.

You got to pay back the BP too...

Don't use RL, or Game Life, to work your game mechanics. It does work in terms of game mechanics influence your character world, that's a given, but having it map the other way isn't necessarily true.

The problem isn't that the Missions GM's aren't doing their best. I've run Missions modules before, and everyone had a good time. The problem is that the nature of convention play and the modules themselves don't lend themselves to a lot of individual roleplay. You've got about four hours to run your game, it's going to be a challenge to add extras.

If someone has In Debt, but hasn't been paying it off, you simply don't have time to add a combat scene with some legbreakers. You're too busy trying to move the plot along. Combat scenes take up a lot of time as is; it may come to a choice between acting punitive towards one player, and entertaining the entire group.

A lot of people have made a lot of good points, here. Consider In Debt under review; I don't want to say anything more firmly until after the Sunday Missions Meeting.

When its reviewed could Bad Rep also be reviewed?
Bad Rep is currently on the not-allowed list.
Its quite cut and dry and only a -5 quality for 3 permanent Notoriety.

I'm not a fan of this Quality, but to play Devil's advocate...

In addition to time consuming "leg breakers", it's easy enough (and plausible) to have the lender's use their connections against the runner. Loyalty 1 contacts may be getting leaned on heavily; Fixers and other sources may not want to sell new goods to someone that has a mark over their head. The Lender can AR spam the runners frequent haunts so that everyone knows his face and that he's a loser: to the point where the character get's a point of Notoriety. How awkward is it during a stake out when the guy following you b/c you are behind on payments starts blowing his horn at you and making hand signs about paying.

Granted, many of these things become dependent on prepared and good GM's, as much as anything else. But I believe an RPG hinges on that anyway.

Don't forget it would have to be moded based on the char the player has, a good hacker char, the AR might not be as big an issue,

the honking the horn? eh, who dosn't have supressed and silenced weapons in newyork (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) or worse, got a good fake sina nd no weapons, or a real sin (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Call NYPD inc,

Whats a loan shark going to do? tell them that he broke the law by giving you a lot of money that he shouldn't of? hehe but again its an issue of time that in a lot of mission games simply isn't possible, I could see it being done if say the table had a group that is used to working together, that can cut down on the time of the mission over all, but say a table of 6 random people? I really do not see it as convenet.

Not important, but... the honking the horn was during a stake out-- doesn't matter if the players kill the driver, their planned stake out is ruined. But, this is a negative quality that could punish the table, yet only one player got the BP for it.

The CGL Demo team have commented that Missions are not allowed to add to the module.
The Dunner earlier posted there was a way to handle leg breakers in each module.
Anything outside those parameters may be wonderful GM'ing yet be outside the scope of a Missions game. Missions games are written to be cut and dry.

Much to our chagrin. :-/

"Secret testing" in Terminal anyone? CHOOO! CHOOO!

Robert (aka Spanner)

Lots of fun stuff goes on in Terminal... ask the guys locked underground in the bank vault in the Scramble this year... at least 3 corps had "secret" labs down under there. Its a Z-zone.

As to the implication of plot railroading, I've heard it from a few players in a Missions group I ran. Get over it, there's not a lot of "sandbox" you can do with 4 hours. If Missions aren't kept in certain parameters, you have some players who would "sandbox" the fun out of other's lives. Its a short story that can be run in 4 hours at a convention, many of which are also written to be introductory adventures for players. Right now its what's on tap, though there are discussions about some changes regarding what you've seen in the retirement thread. It'll still have to fit 4 hour slots though

My personal opinion pretty much echos what a couple of the Missiosn GMs have stated thus far. It would be wonderful to have the ability to play Missions as an "open" game, and indeed, Caine has run our one Shaodwrun group here through some modified versions of Firestorm and one of the others, and we're currently starting a real Missions game with another group (Woohoo, RUsh will be getting Karma and Money, starting with Mission 02!).

But... Con games aren't even 4 hours, really. They're 3 Hours and 45 minutes long, and you have to budget at least a little bit of the time at the front of the game to help the inevitable new player or two that shows up and needs a character (We keep copies of the Sample Characters on hand, and let the players know they can keep the karma and money from their first game, and apply it to a "real" character afterward for future games). And at many of the con games I've run and seen run so far, we end up with more than 6 payers (I've run as many as 8, and I think one table took 9 this year, because we didn't want to turn players away if we could help it). I do my best as a GM to try and get every player involved in the plot, at least a little. Especially the quieter players who often get overshadowed by the more outspoken players. But... At the end of the day, there's no room for much personal stuff.

It kinda sucks, but it's the nature of the beast. I don't usually know the players and their characters, I don't have time to look over every character and deal with wierd plot hooks and quirks beyond that which is worked into the game. And while we could probably change the games to 6 hour or 8 hour time blocks, which would REALLY let us get in there and go to town with roleplay and stuff... That just eats up way too much time at a convention, for both the players and the GMs. The Scramble is 8 hours, and that's really hard to fit in, and it's something I'm actively looking forward to and planning for now each year.

Anyways, long story short... I definitely think In Debt should be added to the list of "No can do" flaws. That, or there needs to be a "Missions version" with strict guidelines for how it works in relation to the Missions Scenario. But the easiest way is to avoid it overall.

Bull

And yes, to answer the OP... You still have to pay off the Karma cost too. So 30 BP would be 60 Karma. Ouch.

I completely disagree on the basis that almost every single negative quality can be, and usually is exploited by players looking for power builds or easy BPs.

Examples:

Addiction to BTL coupled with Scorched (if that's not a gimme what is)
Codeblock for those 'that were hackers, until [insert incident]'
Uncouth, as if you'll let the crotch grabbing and swearing one speak for the group
Simsense Vertigo for a Gun Adept, who'll never use a smartlink anyways...no real need to
SINner when you can buy fake SINs anyways
Ork or Elf posers
Gremlins for a 'back to nature' Shaman
Sensitive System for Magicians of all stripes
Focus Addiction

I can pick apart any number of these and how they're applied, so before ruling out one that is just as exploitable as the rest (and previously allowed).

And, to answer the inevitable question, yes I do have a Missions character with the In Debt quality. Coupled with the Poor Self Control (Compulsive Gambling) which insures he will remain In Debt till he works on the other problem. I'd hate to see my character who has been through 5 Missions (that's 20 hours) suddenly invalidated because it, like so many other Negative Qualities can be exploited.

So far, any changes to the system (the new Karma system, for example) has invalidated a character, so I wouldn't worry about that. YOu'd likely be grandfathered in if they changed the rules midstream.

And yes, while a lot of Flaws can be cheesed, especially in Missions, at least a lot of them have a direct, tangible effect on SOMETHING. WHether it's a negative to a dice roll (even if you don't plan to use that skill or ability), preventing you from ever choosing to pick up cyberware (YOu never know), to simply making it more likeely to alert security when you pass through the Manhatten Checkpoint (Ativated Focuses tend to draw red flags there).

<shrug>

It's partly up to the player to roleplay these things. It's on his head if he's "cheating". Hell, no Missions GM at a con is going to sit there with a calculator and make sure your points add up correctly, so if you really wanted to cheat, you could just throw in a half dozen extra skill points, maybe an extra attribute point or two, and call it a day.

Really, with a loose game system like Missions, we have to trust the players to play up their part of this stuff. For the moment, for In Debt, that means making payments in game, or at least reminding the GM that you have the flaw so that, if he wants, he can send some legbreakers after you. It means Roleplaying that BTL and Scorched addition, it means mouthing off to the Johnson in the middle of meet for being Uncouth (Trust me, Rush is Uncouth, and it gets him into a LOT of trouble), SINner will bite you in the ass if you fail a checkpoint roll, and that back to nature Shaman HAS to have at leasta commlink to operate in New York, so what happens if his commlink fritzes while he's being scanned by a NYPD drone outside the MCP HQ?

<shrug>

The Missions GMs are there to run the adventure, tell the story, and hopefully let everyone have fun. THey're not there to police your character. It's up to you to be honest and play the character you built.

Bull

The problem is, of course, that some flaws can be cheesed more easily than others. If I see an Addiction on a character sheet, it might be easier to bring it up in game than, say, an Incompetence to Nautical Mechanic. Especially in Denver.

Yes, cheating is easy in Missions. But there's cheating, and then there's cheating. Someone who min/maxes carefully isn't on the same level as someone who brings a 900-point character to the table. Treating them the same isn't right. And speaking of treating people the same, what about those who can't min/max as well, and end up with easily exploitable flaws? They're going to consistently get shafted, while the skilled builders get away scot-free.

To prevent abuse we should simply not play SR Missions. If there are no rules, there are no loopholes or other things to "Cheese".

No con game is perfect so really any con-based campaign system is largely either generic or hopelessly optimistic in its implementation. The latter makes some assumptions about the players and GM's and the SRM track record isn't shabby for the last several years its been run as-is. In the end its peer pressure that keeps an openended chargen in check.

Breaking News from the SRM Team:

In Debt and Bad Rep will be added to the list of prohibited qualities. If you've already got one or both, don't sweat it, just keep them. We don't like to do retroactive continuity.

As a side note, we'll be updating the FAQ soonish, partially to include these changes, and partially because there are some other things that need to be updated.

This is a bad decision as well. If you're going to make In Debt go away, but everybody who made a character in the past 13 months since RC came out has a significant advantage that is no longer available to new players.

What's more... there's nothing to stop somebody from saying they created said character from before In Debt's existence.

This needs to be either clarified, fixed, or retroactively ret-conned and the players who took it must take 30bp of other flaws.

I have to disagree with you there Cryptoknight. Missions are already inherently "unfair" in that everyone has differing levels of karma and power. Who cares if one person got a few extra BPs by taking a quality? If they did it to "cheese" on purpose, then yeah, they were kind of being jerks, but thats why you sit at a table and have other players give you a hard time for cheesing out.

In my book the SRM team has a fine solution. Something like in debt doesn't really have a place at a missions game due to lack of time, but some people might have taken it to honestly make an interesting character. The missions guys don't want to ruin all the character concepts of in-debted people. The SRM team isn't saying that In Debt players should just get off scot-free either, if at all possible I'm sure GMs will try to bring it into play. I don't see their solution saying "oh yeah, GMs, if you see this, just pat the player on the back and tell them they lucked out."

Also, as far as people "just saying" they built there characters before hand...they could also pick and choose old pre-errata rules and try to run with them until they got caught and "just say" the didn't know any better. This again falls on player trust. Which just sort of has to be a given.

In my mind missions are about fun, not necessarily balance. And, as much as I love my min-maxing, the more I play missions the more I feel its alot more about flavor then crunch.

Then why get rid of In Debt at all?

Seriously, at the same karmic levels... I should be more or less equivalent to another character. Except that characters made before the change get 30k in cash and 30 BP for taking a broken Negative quality that was pointed out as broken over a year ago.

Suddenly now it's a problem, well all the characters it was enough of a problem to cause it to be pulled are still out there, that problem isn't going away.

CollateralDynamo pretty much nailed it: we added In Debt to the excluded list because of the time and GM attention involved with applying the drawback and with removing the negative quality with Karma.


Personally, I'd recommend patting the player on the back and telling them they lucked out, then smacking them with it during play. =i)