All-Cash Experience Rewards, Can ditching karma be a viable system? Options

[JanessaVR]

One of the eternal debates in Shadowrun – karma versus cash rewards. The Awakened/Emerged want karma – bucket loads of it for breakfast each day. Everyone else says "show me the money!" Decades later and a million posts about "properly balancing" rewards, and the issue persists.

Well…why not take a sword to this particular Gordian Knot and implement a single medium of reward?

I first started seriously considering this solution after reading this thread a while back. The more I’ve pondered this, the more it’s seemed like it might just be a viable concept. So, what do PCs want to purchase with their run rewards?

• Gear and Cyberware: Already cost cash, we’re good here.
• Improved Attributes: Training, pricey surgery, or even magical rituals (all costing money) could account for improving these after character creation.
• Improved Skills: The easiest category to justify with cash – you spent it on specialized training.
• New Qualities: Same as for improving Attributes.
• New Spells: Spell formulae typically cost money, but enterprising players get around this all the time, and many are posted on the Matrix for free. Spells could then just have a set cost in expendable magical supplies to "fully learn" them back in the mage’s lodge.
• Foci: These already cost serious cash. Just bump up the cost per level of Force to account for expendable magic supplies used back in the mage’s lodge to bond the focus for their use.

So, just how much cash for these? In the end, it might just be easier to come up with a cash-to-BP conversion rate, instead of the typical cash-to-KP, since Qualities are listed in BP costs anyway, and the BP costs for Attributes (10 BP per point), Active Skills (4 BP per point), Knowledge/Language Skills (2 BP per point), and Spells (3 BP each) are right there in basic character creation.

Everything now comes down to how much cash the PCs get paid, with all rewards being easily quantifiable in monetary terms. The world really does run on money with this system.

Your thoughts?