Karma Handouts, a complement to the Karma levels thread Options

[Synner]

As a complement to the Karma Level thread and in the interest of determining some of the baselines among the community, I'm posting this thread.

Yes, I know runs have varying payscales and Karma handouts and that different groups play with different regularities... but for the purpose of this poll assume a single moderately difficult life-risking run, nothing too epic, rather something such as a megacorporate executive extraction, a run on a secure R&D facility or cleaning out the hive in Queen Euphoria. Something that takes at least a couple of sessions to complete.

Also note the purpose of the exercise is to detemine Karma per run and not per gaming session.

[Sphynx]

I think you shoulda started with a 1-3 there. :P I know alot of games where 3 is average. Personally, we end up with 4 to 5 per gaming session.

However, I HAD to vote per gaming session here because runs are once in a blue moon in our gaming world. We run campaigns which never seem to have an ending, one game leading straight into another. Can't recall my last 'shadowrun' into a corp type building really, though that too would be per-game I think. I think people who really play tend to find that those kinda runs would get very very boring after about 50 karma worth of gaming. Campaigns are stories that just never have an ending really. And only once in the past year or so has my character really had a chance to 'sit down and breathe a bit'. So, in reality, I suppose my last 'run' was closer to 120 karma. :P

Sphynx

[Synner]

[TheOneRonin]

I tend to give out about double the standard per run, but that's because we play so infrequently. One of my players has been playing a mage for the past 8 years of real time, and he's still only earned about 150 karma. It's really hard to see any character growth when you play, at most once a month, and only get 3 or 4 karma. Also, I tend to give out karma at the end of each session, as opposed to each run. We just don't know how long it's going to be until our next game.

Back when I was in highschool and college, it was easy to get people together frequently to run games. But now, everyone has jobs and families, so we game infrequently, at best.

However, for those of you lucky enough to run a game every week or so, I would think 3 to 4 karma should be plenty. That alone would put you closing on the 200 mark after a year of gaming....IF your character survived that long. :D

[spotlite]

we play a free form campaign style mostly, and yeah, we include chapter breaks.

but the game sessions are only about 2.5 to 3 hours long (7.30 to 1030) cos of commitments and travel time. So it takes us a LOONG time to get anything done. Plus the players like to research EVERYthing, then they faff and get caught up in roleplaying, which also slows it down some more.

[Cochise]

@ Synner:

I actually do miss the 1-3 point option => I couldn't vote.
As to why: I do not award karma per gaming session, but per completed run. If that run happens to be multi-sessioned that doesn't change too much. I'm however more inclined to award individual karma in such cases.
But my average actually is 2-3 karma ... 2 for survival and succesful completion (1 if the run is not successfully completed) and 1 of the possible individual awards (on average) ...

[Bearclaw]

It varies.
The last run took 2 sessions, a lot of planning and leg work and they brought it off flawlessly. They got 8 karma.
The one before took 4 sessions, involved 5 different fights, an ambush, border crossings, terrorists, snipers, random harrassment by NAN cops, and a brilliant last second move by one of the players to save all their lives. They got 11.

[Seville]

I tend to hand out about 4 to 6 per run (and if I get a player who just makes the game session a great time for everyone, I give out more to him or her).

When I did the bulk of my playing in college, we would usually play for 8 to 12 hours in one session, but those days are over. For those sessions, we would usually give out 6-8.

[Synner]

[Cochise]

[Barracuda_Kali]

We get about 5 or so per run. We also have up to three runs per night (but only if we have the time). We tend to play for about 7 or 8 hours.

[mfb]

...cochise, you don't give karma for the run itself?

[Cochise]

@ mfb ...

*erm* I said that a run will usually give 1 to 2 karma (survival and successful completion *provided that it really is successfully completed*) ...
The I said that on average my individual players do qualify for one of the seven individual karma awards (1 point being the average there) =>

2 +1 = 3 on average ...

[RedmondLarry]

[DV8]

I hand out karma after each session. One for playing, any other karma they get is related to good ideas, good handling of a situation, good roleplaying, and achievement of critical goals. But I do this per session, so depending on how long the players take to work through an entire storyline; one storyline usually taking up a couple of months of real time, gaming once a week, for about 5 hours, having multiple sub-goals.

[Barracuda_Kali]

[Synner]

Well, strictly speaking legwork and logistics aren't downtime. They're an integral part of a run, without them you're almost certainly dead in the water.

[DV8]

Yeah, that's how I read it, too, Syn. But I understand now.

I've noticed that most karma awards come from roleplaying downtime. I figured that since, as a GM, you can't cater to the background of every character at once when preparing a plotline, some of the players will use the downtime of their players to do most of their personal story-building. Because they are more motivated they deliver some outstanding roleplaying during those instances. Which is not to say that they do a bad job when on the job, of course.

[Barracuda_Kali]

[DV8]

Legwork within our group is usually twice as dangerous, requiring twice as much concentration than the actual 20 minutes of action that results from that is. Dealing with contacts implicitely means exposure to parts of your plans, and if someone can piece together what you're planning - wether it an incursion on extrateritorial ground to kidnap someone, assassinate a foreign minister, hijack a truck full of gunparts on their way to a Weapons World assembly facility for the Vory - you are in deep, deep shit.

[Synner]

I second that. My players have learned never to do legwork without backup on hand and to be really careful with what they say especially if not all their contacts are busom buddies.

[Dim Sum]

Legwork? What legwork?

All my players do is keep running away from the hundred and one thousand bad guys that keep dogging their heels, hunting them down for no apparent reason.

:D

[Reaver]

I'd have to say the average is about 8 or 9 per run. The only time this changes is when I have multiple chapters within a large run, like the one I'm running now. Since they know this run is being written into a story, they've been doing a lot of great roleplaying, so the karma awards have been a little higher than average right now (about 10-12).

>Reaver

[Synner]

[JongWK]

6-7 on average. I'm not counting runs like Double Exposure or Harlequin's Back, which are Karma gold mines.

[ Spoiler ]

I remember the first time I ran DE, the survivors' jaws dropped when I handled out Karma. The Wolf shaman turned bug and the street sammie who ended up as a Renraku experiment just sat on their chairs, almost weeping.