ShadowCash, A crazy idea to keep a game 'street' Options

[imperialus]

My derailment in the "beginning shadowruner needs advice" thread got me thinking about the advancement of cash heavy classes and what you can do to balance them with Karma hogs.


Now IME one point of Karma is worth about 15 to 20,000 nuyen to a Street Sam, a Rigger, even some Hackers. Now lets imagine a group of 'typical' players. say there are 5 members, they average 5 karma per run. They also divide any cash rewards (Johnson payouts ect.) equally. Now, say to keep this group 'balanced' and his Sam players happy the GM starts handing out more and more nuyen for each run. Eventually the Sam gets his fancy ware, and the rigger gets is dream car but by then the physad has initiated to level 2 or 3 and the mage powerful enough that he is beginning to make them redundant in a lot of situations. They're also easily affording the payments on a hi rise condo in Bellveu while the cash hogs are living in a warehouse.

To equal this out I came up with a crazy idea. ShadowCash.

ShadowCash fills a metagame roll sort of like Karma. No person in game ever hands you over a point of karma, and likewise no one ever hands you over a stack of ShadowCash. ShadowCash is awarded at the end of each adventure, or whenever you award Karma. ShadowCash is worth the same amount and Nuyen but it works very differently. First of all, Shadowcash cannot be used for anything but very large purchases. Stuff like expensive ware, armour plated vehicles, even big guns, whatever the GM doesn't want freely available on the street. To spend ShadowCash a player only needs to state that he is doing so, and what he wants to buy. The GM then introduces it into the campaign as soon as he feels is reasonable. How exactly the introduction goes is up to the GM. Maybe the Rigger has an opportunity to steal and convert an armoured security truck, or the Sam finds a cybertorso in the Ares facility they are raiding, or the Mage finds a useful foci or summoning materials on the body of a sec mage. They may still need to spend a small amount of actual nueyn on them before they can use them, the Sam might need to pay a streetdoc to install the war and the rigger might have to pay a hacker to wipe the van from the records, and a few other modifications. These costs should be kept as low as possible however. If the GM wants to charge a lot for the service then he might want to lower the ShadowCash cost of the item by the same amount. Anything awarded with ShadowCash is considered the sole property of the character who spent the money. It is not the 'groups' van it is the riggers van and he can do with it as he pleases. ShadowCash cannot be transferred between characters. There is no group ownership of a Thunderbird just because the mage heavy group has a million nuyen sitting in their ShadowCash deposit boxes.

Day to day living costs, bribes, requests for help and everything worth less than at least a few thousand nuyen are still drawn from the players real nuyen just like normal. This means that the GM can award a great deal more ShadowCash than regular cash if he wants to keep the game "street".

Calculating ShadowCash.

The first step of calculating how much ShadowCash to award is to determine how much cash you feel a point of Karma is 'worth'. I've just been using my numbers (20,000:1) in this thread because they're what I feel the balance point is between a the ultimate karma hog (the mage) and the ultimate cash hog (the sam). This theory is untested though so use it at your own risk. If you want to try this set the number where you feel comfortable 1000:1, 5000:1, 100,000:1 whatever floats your boat. Think of how much cash you're usually happy with doling out and go from there.

The second step is to decide how much Nuyen you want to actually give your players. You figure you want them having a tough time making ends meet, constantly hunting for next months rent, but still becoming more and more skilled as they advance. With this in mind you decide you want to give them a 'piddly' 500-1000 nuyen for every run with 3 or 4 runs per month. Assuming he set the nuyen-karma ratio at 20,000:1 this means that he needs to give the runners each 19,500 ShadowNuyen for every point of Karma they earn. This means that the Street Sam will be able to 'afford' a 300,000 nuyen set of Beta Wired Reflexes III (my example in the other thread) after 15 points of Karma. In other words, about the same time a Mage is likely to be initiating. Given the split between ShadowCash and real cash the likely amount of Karma necessary will be 16-18 but still, it helps level the playing field. Just like how a mage needs to spend some of his Karma doing stuff like improving skills a Sam will need to spend a portion of his resources keeping up his lifestyle and other needs.

This means that as the campaign advances and the nuyen awards increase, the ShadowCash rewards will decrease. Every time you award Karma look at how much nuyen you've handed out since the last time Karma was awarded and subtract that number from the amount of ShadowCash you award at the same time. Say the team finishes a run that nets them each 5 Karma and 20,000 nuyen, then you give each player 80,000 in Shadow Cash.

If you feel like getting particularly creative you could even make players go on special side quests for particularly expensive items similar to how a mage often needs to go on a side quest to initiate. It could be a run on an MCT shipment that apparently has a particularly hot piece of ware that the Sam wants or whatever. If it would be disruptive to the game though just have it fall into their lap over the course of a run.

Advantages:

This lets you control the atmosphere of the game. You can keep it as dark and gritty and hand to mouth as you want, or make the runners crazy jet setting special operatives for hire, or anything in between and still be confidant that the characters power level will be relatively equal.

It encourages (or at least doesn't discourage) the runners from taking on 'pro-bono' work for each other, contacts, friends, and hooks in their backstory since as long as they earn karma they are still getting some sort of cash reward.


Possible Weaknesses:

It is a relatively useless beanie to karma heavy classes like Mages and Physads. Sure they'll get a few things out of it like more powerful Foci but eventually that'll max out for them and this would most certainly earlier than would normally be the case.

Some classes that rely on a more even spread of Karma and Nuyen like Riggers or Deckers might begin to advance even faster though double dipping.

It also requires a gentleman's agreement between the GM and players that various 'get rich quick' schemes (like carjacking americars) simply won't work. The players might try as hard as they can to find that 'big payday' but it just won't ever pan out. This might actually make a good overall plot. A scheming batch of runners, always on the lookout for a big score but something always gets in their way. The GM might also want to introduce a huge payday to the runners at one point. That might be amusing too, especially if the campaign has been going on for a while. Instead of the Beverly Hillbillies you could have the Bellveu Barrens Rats. The key is though that the group will be able to make these jumps at about the same time.

Anyhow... I spent far longer writing that up than I'd originally intended. If you've stuck with me this long I'd love to hear your thoughts.