[X] My Assistant

[Moon-Hawk]

I don't have a clear question, exactly, just something I'd like to discuss with everyone.
In the multitude of threads about karma I found while searching, none of them really went into detail in exactly what I'm looking for.

There are lots of old threads talking about how much karma to give. That's not my issue, I'll decide how quickly I want my campaign to advance.

The issue is, I've never been fully comfortable assigning karma exactly as described on page 263.
The first thing is, I'm not 100% sure that the suggested awards are precisely what I want to be rewarding, and in those proportions. I'm not saying they're bad either, but if other GMs ignore some of those awards or add awards for other things I'd love to hear some suggestions.
Second, I'm bad at giving individual awards. I worry that I might accidentally favor someone, I worry that I'll award one person's brilliant idea but simply forget about another person's, and I worry that imbalanced awards could lead to some hurt feelings. I don't want to punish someone who may be actively participating, having fun, and contributing to the fun of others but who doesn't happen to shine in any particular category. I feel like I'd much rather give an equal award to the group as a whole, everyone earning the same amount based on the overall RPing, smarts, guts, motivation, etc of the team. There's an argument that I'd be cheating the players who put extra work into it, vs. an argument that people who are PRing more or contributing more ideas are rewarded in other intangible non-karma ways.

So that's it, I don't have a question, precisely, or really any strong opinions. I just have a vague sense of dissatisfaction with the standard karma award system and I'd love to hear other people's suggestions and talk about pros and cons of different systems.

[DireRadiant]

I've done some of the following.

In addition to session karma
- Have the players vote to assign X number of Karma to one player each session.
- Have each player assign a bonus karma point to one other player. Accompany each vote assignment with an explanation for the award.

This puts the guilt and shame of selecting and distinguishing a player, and uneven karma awards and accumalation on the players themselves. Can't blame the GM for favoring a player. It's also very revealing to see what the players like to reward versus what I thought of rewarding.

(One side effect of the end of session rewards is that a lot of players resorted to taking notes so they could remind themselves of what activity they wanted to reward at the end of the session, which effectively meant more players kept records of what happened during a session, which experienced campaigners know makes a GM work easier.)

Also, instead of karma, which players can pretty much do with as they wish, I occasionally will assign IC rewards of some kind. PC finds a wallet in the street. A case of goodies falls of the truck. PC get a free specialization in a skill of GMs choice. PC gets a free language skill, PC has an attribute raised instead of karma. PC gets a free skill point with which to raise any current skill.

[deek]

In the group I play in (I run the SR4 campaign, but play in a Heroes and DnD campaign with the same group), group experience is the rule. When I used to run DnD back in the day, I was all about individual experience, keeping track of who did what, in and out of combat and also gave bonuses for roleplaying...

Nowadays, we all just enjoy the game and playing together, and while advancement is desired, keeping things balanced is as well. So, for karma rewards, I figured out the rate of advancement I wanted in the campaign, based both on the power level and the frequency we played.

And what I do is award a base 10 karma per session played, even if no one did anything...that is just the award for coming to the game and playing for a few hours...on top of that, I give anywhere from 1-10 additional karma based on the run and how much fun everyone had. If everyone really did sit around and do a bunch of "downtime" stuff, I'd give 11-13 karma for the session. In a really intense session, in the think of a run, they might get 15-18 karma...

My group is more interested in balance, so whatever the reward, just having equal karma dispersed is what keeps everyone happy. When it comes to individual stuff, that comes out in flavor text during the game and the GM write-up I do after each session. Somewhat of a descriptive review of the session which everyone enjoys reading afterwards. It keeps the game fun, gives karma balance and rewards individualism and role-playing by way of the write-up, so everyone stays happy!

[Dashifen]

[Moon-Hawk]

I thought about the voting system. In general, I think it's a good way to go, for exactly the reasons listed.
Unfortunately, it doesn't help me much for my current campaign, which is a conference call format with 8 players all over the country plus myself, but it's very much play-as-you-can, and I don't really have a guaranteed commitment from everyone. As such, assigning them extra homework such as voting for other people's karma leaves me with one or two votes and a bunch of non-responses. Lazy bums. *shakes fist impotently*

I also like to give non-karma awards, almost always in the form of knowledge skills, like your other suggestion. When you award them with karma, they get to do whatever they want with it which can potentially become unbalancing over time, but if they develop their character in a certain direction and you simply award them a point in a relevant knowledge skill, it's still a cool award that they can use effectively if they're clever, but it can't over/under-power anyone.

[Demerzel]

[Moon-Hawk]

Ouch. I feel your pain, man.

[fistandantilus4....]

As for awards, I usually try to award enough so that a PC can raise some sort of stat every two sessions. That way you get a pay off, but still have room to grow. just a rule of thumb. I also give out karma for stuff like :
Statting NPC contacts
Doing write ups for new locations
Keepign a log (one was written up in a blog format, decker character)
Figuring out plots . I like to make some really twisted story lines that the PCs have to figure out, like in some of the books like LoneWolf. Bonus karma to who ever figures out what the hell is going on first.
And OOG, bringin lots of food.


I also institued another little system for general, smaller rewards. A little, hey that was a good idea, here's 100xp sort of thing. I call 'em Common Sense Points (mostly for a lack of a better name, so they're CSPs). Basically, someone gets a great idea, pulls a nice save, great roleplaying, that sort of thing, they get a CSP. Basicalyl equivelant to karma, only that it counts only towards knowledge skills. Because I don't see a lot of PC's spending their hard earned karma on knowledge skills, they prefer active skills. But I like to bring a lor of K skill use in to the game. This workds well to promote that. In some games I also let them exchange 5 CSp for apoint of karma. Works really well, my players love it.

[cetiah]

[cetiah]

[cetiah]

[HappyDaze]

[cetiah]

[fistandantilus4....]

I love applying notoriety. I have a few players that actibely try to gain it for ceratin characters, and avoid it like the plague for others. It makes for interesting dynamics. And yeah, when used regularly, it can balance street cred pretty well.

[HappyDaze]

[HappyDaze]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Burn two Street Cred, lower Notoriety by one.

As Notoriety is not limited to 0, it doesn't matter after a while.

[cetiah]

[HappyDaze]

[cristomeyers]

The Public Awareness attribute does increase far too fast. It only takes 30 karma to hit the 3+ mark. Less if you have Notoriety. Even if that's not "Front Page News", it's close. It's hard to justify being a ghost in the 'plex when schoolchildren are playing games based on your exploits.

On average, your runners could earn 30 karma in what, anywhere from 3 to 7 sessions? Not a long life expectancy for characters before they're out of the shadows and onto the Trid.

[cetiah]

[cetiah]

This has been the way I use reputation in my game:

For Street Cred to work - I mean even conceptually - in my campaign, it only applies to other people who have Street Cred. Thus, only Johnsons, gangers, fixers, and certain Lone Star detectives will know anything about you based on Street Cred. And anyone who constitutes "a contact". Journalists and the like will have it too, but that doesn't necessarily mean the media does. If you're the "front page news" anywhere, it's only on pirated trids that "nobody" really believes anyway.

But I always assumed Notoriety was public, so a high Notoriety means your front page news but if you have a high Street Cred, you're still a shadow op except with those "in the know".

I assume ordinary folks who are front page news would replace Street Cred with some other reputation score, like Fame or something, that works with similar mechanics but is conceptually different.

Just how I always handled it and didn't know anyone else ever did it differently.

[Demerzel]

[Garrowolf]

I use a bit of a different system in regards to Karma. I broke Karma into it's XP aspects and it's metagaming aspects. Now I have Karma and XP. I give out both at the end of a session. XP only effects increase in traits like attributes and skills. I will give out at least 2 and as much as 5 but that has to have been a difficult run. I also use harder increases for attribute increases (New Rating x 5) from a suggestion I found on here.

Karma has more to do with luck and cool actions in game. If you role play well you get karma. If you come up with a cool idea or say something funny or you do a cool stunt then you get karma. If you max out your successes on a test then you get a karma. Karma can be used to buy up Edge, or bond foci, and gain your edge for a test. Basically everyone starts with their edge in karma. After that they can gain or loose it. I made bonding based on karma instead of XP because I couldn't figure out why mages with foci were not learning as much if they had a foci. I didn't make it too easy though because I doubled the bonding cost in karma. You can gain about as much karma in a game as XP.

This has worked out well in my games. I can hand out karma for cool things all day long and it doesn't imbalence the game like XP would.

I also let people try and buy up contacts that they persue themselves or raise loyalty levels of contacts in game by spending karma. The can also spend karma to get a favor without paying money because they asked at a lucky time.

[Eryk the Red]

It's kind of funny. I ditched having any particular system for how to assign karma long ago. It's a running joke in my campaign that at the end of the session I pick up the rulebook and pretend to use the karma rules.

I have certain rituals that have become important, which I guess do amount to a system of rules. First, everyone suggests a name for the session. Like an episode name, if the campaign were a TV show. The group then picks one, by consensus. (I used to have them vote, but they started to vote for the wrong reasons, so consensus seems better.) The person whose name gets picked gets 2 karma. I keep track of these names, and they form the campaign timeline.

Then comes the "Meek Shall Inherit the Earth Award". The group picks someone to get 1 karma, for whatever reason. Usually goes to whoever had the least to do that session.

Then I give the normal one karma for showing up and one for succeeding (if they succeeded). Then I turn to each player and say "One to {character name} for {interesting or cool thing that the character did that sesssion}." Everyone always gets one of them. It's sort of a reminder of how each character participated.

Then comes the 2 to 4 karma "because I feel like it".

And characters can get a couple of extra karma for anything especially cool/awesome/hilarious their character did or said that session. I gave one to the troll (by the name-a Hot Death) for going to the bathroom. Because no one else's characters had done that.