Question about In Debt, Do you have to pay it off with Karma? Options

[cryptoknight]

Ok RC has.

In Debt
Bonus: 5 to 30 BP
The character is indebted to a third party, usually an underworld
syndicate, large gang or corporation, chosen by the player
with gamemaster approval. For every 5 BP taken, the character
receives an extra 5,000¥ at character creation; this money can be
above and beyond the normal 50 BP cap for gear. The character
then owes her creditor that much plus another 50 percent. The
amount owed increases 10 percent every month, as compound interest.
If the character is unable to pay at least the interest amount
each month, the creditor may send someone looking for her.

Which means if you take 30BP of In Debt, you owe 45,000 to whomever with a 10% interest accruing on balance.
Generally when you want to get rid of a negative quality, you pay it off with karma, but if you manage to make say about 50,000 nuyen in your first month, conceivably, you could pay off your principal + first month's interest.

Would you still have to pay off the BP in karma?

[Dashifen]

I would require karma pay off, yeah. Until then, the person is still known as someone who was in deep with the Mob or the Yaks or whatever and that may make them unlikely to loan him money, do favors, etc.

[masterofm]

This is Shadowrun though. You might not be allowed to pay it all off at once. They might want to squeeze you, and the interest is not 10%. It's not a bank and your not getting off that easy. Generally that kind of interest is 100-200% back by the first month... at least. Lending to the mob is not a bank and a Shadowrun bank is probably owned by the mob. I have had cards that had an interest of 30% and that is what an actual official bank was trying to rape me with for the interest.

I would say you pay it off with karma.

[cryptoknight]

Yah... I should have posted this in the missions forum...

How that impacts in a home game is different from a missions one... If I pay the loan shark back and give him 10% interest for the current month... he get's 49,500 for the 30,000 he loaned me... he's making good money period.

I'd also like to point out that he's got almost 50,000 he can now loan out to somebody else and get about 82,000 back from the next month if its paid off...

That's a 40% margin on the first loan and the second.


Also note that the other things your talking about aren't quantified in the rules.. there isn't a street cred impact for going in debt... the only negative connotation is if you don't pay the interest payment each month.

If the character is unable to pay at least the interest amount
each month, the creditor may send someone looking for her.

Even a loan shark expects you to pay something on the principal... it's the nature of a loan, even to the mob, you eventually pay it off or die... for the mob it's more profitable if you pay it off (unless they get the drop on you and your body is intact for sale as spare parts).

[DireRadiant]

When the runner shows up with the full payoff in the first month, "Oh sorry, I sold your paper to corp X who would like you to pay it off in kind rather then cash."

Probably some of the newer negative qualities in RC should have the noteriety attached.

[cryptoknight]

Ok... but that's like saying that "you took Astral Beacon as a negative quality... and to me that means you get gremlins as well".

RC/RAW says you have to make payments of at least your interest every month or they come looking for you...it also states that the interest is compounded if you don't make your interest payment, which implies you should be able to pay your principal down.

If you paid off your 30,000 loan with what amounts to 65% interest in the first month, other than GM fiat and trying to be hard ass on your player who already just spent his first 50,000 to pay this debt off... Why would you do that?

[cryptoknight]

Probably some of the newer negative qualities in RC should have the noteriety attached.

That's probably a valid point... perhaps an RC erratta that gives you a point of Notoriety for every 5 bp of indebtedness?

[DireRadiant]

Ok... but that's like saying that "you took Astral Beacon as a negative quality... and to me that means you get gremlins as well".

RC/RAW says you have to make payments of at least your interest every month or they come looking for you...it also states that the interest is compounded if you don't make your interest payment, which implies you should be able to pay your principal down.

If you paid off your 30,000 loan with what amounts to 65% interest in the first month, other than GM fiat and trying to be hard ass on your player who already just spent his first 50,000 to pay this debt off... Why would you do that?

One possibility is to treat it as a Nuyen for Karma to buy off the negative quality.

[masterofm]

Loan sharks generally have very little return that is why it's not just 10% for the first month and 10% every other month. Generally it is 50-100% per month at least. Loan sharks don't expect you to pay them back, which is why bounty hunters have jobs, and why loan sharks "go to plan" is to break your legs instead of a stern lecture.

Ever seen the movie Goodfellas? The minute you take a loan out or get protection they own you. They own you and they know you are a runner. You will pay it off with karma, because it doesn't matter how much money you have you still owe them.... big time.

The reason why it's a foolish quality is because it puts a money cap on the game. 5k for 5 bp means that they have assigned a value to what they expect you to make in a run. It's dumb, because it all goes back to the car stealing quota. The beginning of the game everyone would have this flaw and then go and steal about 10-15 low end cars in a month and everyone will be paid off. Generally the exchange rate is 1 bp for 5k so why is it 5k for 5 bp? It's a foolish flaw that says "This is the way the game is supposed to be played. This is how much you are supposed to make per run." That is why most people will just out and out ban this flaw.

Also it will turn your game into dead mans boots. That runner will strip everything they possibly can to pay off that debt as quickly as possible.

Also again you are actually given money as part of the flaw and BP. It is basically the best flaw in the game bar none.

[Namelessjoe]

i think if you've got good players who arent going to just loot everything it would be ok to use say it fits in the consept coupled with an addection...
a gambler who needed some fast cash from whoever crunch wize there are 2 neg aspects and all kinds of story potential the mob going after you the casino you screwed over spend abounch of points on skills or stats, low edge(your not lucky you just NEED to gamble, the rush thrills you) secound hand or low grade cyber to get him the edge extra reaction math coprosseser for counting cards magnetic hand for rulett (if its a steel bal andnot some non ferrous materil)

any way there one idea it would be good for really if they play it up and pay it off with a few good runs i wouldn't charge karma then maybe later to get rid of the bad rep.... but if they bought it and with a money run and pay it off just becouse then i would charge karma

[MJBurrage]

This is Shadowrun though. You might not be allowed to pay it all off at once. They might want to squeeze you, and the interest is not 10%. It's not a bank and your not getting off that easy. Generally that kind of interest is 100-200% back by the first month... at least. Lending to the mob is not a bank and a Shadowrun bank is probably owned by the mob. I have had cards that had an interest of 30% and that is what an actual official bank was trying to rape me with for the interest.

I would say you pay it off with karma.

This flaw is very clearly worded, and if you pay off the money and interest, the flaw should be gone.

Side note, the flaw specifies interest of 10% compounded monthly, which works out to an effective APR of 214% (quite a bit higher than even an annual credit card rate of 30%)

[DireRadiant]

This flaw is very clearly worded, and if you pay off the money and interest, the flaw should be gone.

Side note, the flaw specifies interest of 10% compounded monthly, which works out to an effective APR of 214% (quite a bit higher than even an annual credit card rate of 30%)

The flaw text clearly state a leg breaker won't be sent if the money is paid.

sr4 p. 265
"If the gamemaster feels that a character has made the
necessary changes to shrug off a negative quality, he can allow
that character to pay twice the quality's BP cost to remove it."

is also clearly worded.

Thus we have the OP question.

In my opinion, if the GM has some sense that the nuyen will be so free flowing that the debt could be easily repaid, then perhaps the Negative quality should not have been permitted to begin with and the player informed that the opportunity to gain nuyen and upgrades/gear would be soon available in game.

I don't think, my opinion, that there's any real problem with getting rid of the negative quality by allowing the simple payment of the debt off. At least not for that player. The thing to think about though is what happens when other players start thinking about spending karma rewards to buy off their own characters negative qualities. You'll have established that some in character thing can get you around the karma costs that normally are used. I think that Negative Qualities are a valuable component of a PC, that Negative Qualities are a good thing for a PC to have for roleplaying purposes. I love seeing PC with negative qualities, it gives me something fun to work with. SO I would prefer an approach that continued having the negative quality, either extending the term through circumstances, changing the terms, converting the negative quality to some other negative quality, or karma debt, or establish the nuyen to karma for all the players in the game.

[cryptoknight]

That's why I asked yes...

At the same time I also realized I should have posted this as a missions question because we're trying to stay legit within missions so my players can play their missions characters at conventions.

Since the wording of the flaw makes it so that it looks like you can get rid of it by paying it off in cash... even if I were doing a home game, I'd find it hard to not just let the player off. Though it seems that it should carry a notoriety hit with it. Having a -6 dice pool to negotiations tests might slow down the negotiated pay.

I ask because the group I'm with are very good. In the third mission they managed to hack the rigged chopper and land it. They did this with a longshot test that wound up hitting the pilot with Stick-N-shock. The pilot failed to dodge the shot in her seat and while the actual stun damage wasn't enough to incap her, the carry over effects of electricity damage was enough to incap her for a number of rounds. By then, they had landed the chopper and disposed of the pilot. an almost 500,000 chopper sold at about 25% of its street value and divided between 7 players is about 17,000 nuyen... that plus the mission payouts for the first three missions just about puts all the players in our group at the point where they can pay off the debt in their character's first month of running. With the next mission in line for them, and the trucks, etc that they can sell off... they'll easily be able to do it.

I was hoping I had just missed reading some additional penalty that you get from in debt that would make you pay it off with karma... but there isn't one per RAW... which is how con compatible missions are supposed to be run near as I can tell.

And no, generally they don't loot every little thing and strip the boots off of corpses... I've been a bit forceful in having them not do that kind of thing. But a half million nuyen chopper and some looting when it can be done and done without having to worry about law enforcement heading after them right then... well that's very probable.

[MJBurrage]

I've always taken the rules for buying off a flaw with karma to represent the time investment in getting rid of the flaw without having to play through all the details.

In the case of debt, I would assume that buying it off with karma would represent favors done in lieu of cash that settled the debt.

I also would not allow the flaw in a game where it would be easy to pay-off in only a month or two.

It would be unfair to require full cash payment and karma—without warning the player during character creation—since this flaw in particular clearly describes how to pay it off with just cash.

[Muspellsheimr]

Once you pay of In Debt with Nuyen, you still have the Negative Quality - it simply provides no effect, & thus is as good as gone.

[Bearclaw]

A couple of comments.
Most loan sharking is done for pure profit. They DON'T want to own you in general, they want you to borrow 50k today and pay them 60k in two weeks. This is how they stay solvent. If they didn't get paid back, they would run out of money, and go away. They don't loan money out to guys who can't pay it back, because they're in it for profit.

What they did in Goodfellas was a scam from the start. They send their own guys in to be a pain in the ass. The owner of the resturaunt, bar, whatever, goes to the boss and asks for help. He says, "take me on as a partner and no one will bother you." Then, everything is free for the entire crew. Run the place into the ground for a few months, then burn the place down, and get paid again, based on the origonal value.

Game wise, 5 points of karma for 5k is crap. That's why it doesn't work.
If it was 50k per 5 points it would make sense. Now, you can get another 200k for 20 points. The 20 points of karma would be the game mechanic to pay for the offline stuff a PC did to pay back the nuyen.

[BullZeye]

It seems RC has more than one such negative quality that can be just bought off with some coin.
Evil twin - Sure, you look like someone famous but what prevents you for taking a small surgery?
What about Day Job? I quit! Worked there with a fake SIN so yea, you have to burn that SIN but so what.

Getting rid of negative qualities requires karma, so in my books, those cost karma, too. But, as mentioned before, the ratio between karma and coin just doesn't add up this particular quality. The whole quality is more win-win anyway. I can well understand it being there but it would require some extra (house)ruling to make it more of a real negative quality. Perhaps increasing the money gained by it and increasing the payback amount would make it more to think about. 10k, 20% monthly, 200% payback for 5bp. So for full, you get 70k coin but paying 14k a month would be a big deal. As is, the max payment of 3,5k is more of a joke. Drop lifestyle by one or more notch and you are covered in most cases.

[Hagga]

This is Shadowrun though. You might not be allowed to pay it all off at once. They might want to squeeze you, and the interest is not 10%. It's not a bank and your not getting off that easy. Generally that kind of interest is 100-200% back by the first month... at least. Lending to the mob is not a bank and a Shadowrun bank is probably owned by the mob. I have had cards that had an interest of 30% and that is what an actual official bank was trying to rape me with for the interest.

I would say you pay it off with karma.

The yaks are actually like a bank, apparently. No interest, and fees for everyhthing, but hey. It's safer than most grey/black market banks.

[Sceptic]

If the gamemaster approves, a character can work off a negative quality by undertaking severe changes as appropriate to the quality. For example, a character with an Addiction quality must work hard to kick the habit, resisting the temptation to relapse for a significant period (chosen by the gamemaster). If the gamemaster feels that a character has made the necessary changes to shrug off a negative quality, he can allow that character to pay twice the quality’s BP cost to remove it.

In other words, the character needs to pay off the nuyen amount of the loan, and then the karma to get rid of the negative quality. If he doesn't have enough karma available, the GM takes it from his karma payouts until enough karma has been paid.

[DireRadiant]

Since the wording of the flaw makes it so that it looks like you can get rid of it by paying it off in cash...

The wording only says the leg breaker is not sent if the interest is paid.

There is nothing in the negative quality that says the negative quality is bought off by simply paying nuyen.

The text on improving characters with karma explains exactly how to buy off negative qualities.

Buying off the Negative Quality requires
- GM approval
- Significant IC actions (Paying off the debt)
- Karma = 2 * BP

[kzt]

What they did in Goodfellas was a scam from the start. They send their own guys in to be a pain in the ass. The owner of the resturaunt, bar, whatever, goes to the boss and asks for help. He says, "take me on as a partner and no one will bother you." Then, everything is free for the entire crew. Run the place into the ground for a few months, then burn the place down, and get paid again, based on the origonal value.

The average group of PCs are far more dangerous than your average restaurant owner. People who tried clever tricks on the PCs I've known tended to have bad outcomes.

[Zaranthan]

I think DireRadiant finally nailed everything. If a player wanted to pay off the debt without having enough karma to buy off the quality, I'd contrive a reason why the creditor doesn't want to be paid off. He'll take your money, sure, but he's in a position where he can just rip you off, because you agreed to pay back X% every month for the next Y months, and he's got more leg breakers at his disposal than you have legs. After all, if you make minimum payments for the next few years, he makes a boatload more money than if you pay back the principal plus some chump change tomorrow.

[hyzmarca]

A couple of comments.
Most loan sharking is done for pure profit. They DON'T want to own you in general, they want you to borrow 50k today and pay them 60k in two weeks. This is how they stay solvent. If they didn't get paid back, they would run out of money, and go away. They don't loan money out to guys who can't pay it back, because they're in it for profit.

I take it, Bearclaw, that you've never done any lone sharking. Or if you did that you weren't very good at it.

Lenders play the long game, because that's where the money is, same as casinos, card counters, investors, and ect. They make their money from playing the long game. But, unlike casinos, it is possible for their clients to force them to play the short game, and they lose money on the short game, due to simple business overhead (which is why people in the lending business refer to those who pay everything off immediately as "deadbeats"). For this reason, they have to use certain tactics to persuade the borrower to play long.

Banks use the long-term payment plan racket, lending very large sums of money with very long repayment periods and relatively low minimum payments. Credit Card companies prefer a combination of constant revolving debt and minimum payments. The returns on these strategies are low, but they add up to be considerable.

Loan sharks deal with smaller numbers and fewer clients, so they need a different strategy with higher return. Their solution, one that it fairly ideal for them, is to couple high interest rates and minimum payments equal to the interest rate with social engineering people into getting a loan so large that they can only make the minimum payments, but not so large that they'll default.
Modern loan sharks charge around 35% interest monthly, it isn't compounded because that's the minimum payment, so your principal never increases and thus your minimum payments never increase, unless you get another loan. But as long as you keep making the minimum your debt never goes down. After three months, everything they get from you is pure profit (minus overhead). At this point, they have very little to gain from total repayment of the loan and a very lucrative revenue stream to lose. As long as you keep making the minimum payments and nothing more, they keep collecting money from you.

If you stop making the minimum payments, they won't break your legs, of course. That's just a stupid mythological stereotype perpetrated by Hollywood. There is no profit in leg-breaking. They'll repo your car. Most have a contract with a used car dealer or automobile salvage company, they pick it up and it goes right out. They probably get a few hundred bucks for it a grand or two if it is very good. Ostensibly, they do this to recover as much of the principal as possible. In reality, it's for the threat. They don't want anyone's POS car, but losing your wheels can be far worse than a couple of broken legs. And it's legal.


So yeah, they do want to own you, in the sense that they want you to pay and pay and pay, forever.


And no, I wouldn't have legbreakers go after the dude who tries to pay off the debt. I would, however, have a pornomancer give him a very good offer on a slightly larger loan, one big enough for him to buy that doo-dad he's been wanting for a while. Said doo-dad will, of course, serve as collateral for this new larger loan and will be repoed if the interest goes unpaid.

If the doo-dad is Big Bertha, a heavily customized full-auto assault cannon with underbarrel laser chainsaw, that'll just be heartwrenching for the PC who has to give it up. If it's Synaptic Accelerator 3, the repo guy will just wrench that out and not bother to touch the heart.

[masterofm]

Mafia goes in for the pain, destruction of property, or "favors."

Loan sharks go in for the bounty hunters, or repossessing items. <- more legal then the first

I really wanted to say what you said hyzmarca, but part of me felt like there was no point.

It is all about keeping you in their system and having them milk it for all it's worth. You are professionals, you can get the money back quickly if you cared to. You can stat out a character who could basically be ex-special ops and plus I think it is better to play off the flaw in other interesting ways. The mafia boss does not care about the chump change he lent you, and trust me it is chump change. He knows how good you are and you are going to do him some favors. It adds to the story aspect of the game.

Just having a debt that you can just *poof* get rid of does not make the game interesting, and makes this particular quality just a BP and nuyen sink since you can do so much more with 30 bp and extra 30 k instead of you know... taking the cursed quality, or allergies, or all the other tons of negative qualities (and you will have to take 2-5 of them to equal just this one) to even get close to equaling this negative quality, and then somehow slap on 30k.

The reason why this is not a good quality is because it is specific. It almost tells you how you are supposed to pay your runners and what type of game you are supposed to make SR seem like. To me it feels like you are supposed to be rolling gangers if you want to prolong this negative quality. I mean hell most negative qualities runners don't pay off with karma. So if you can pay it off with (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) you should be able to pay off every other negative quality with either karma or (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

[kzt]

One of the main people who use loan sharks are crooks who need front money for a job. For example, you need to break into a safe and need a burning bar/thermic lance for your safe guy. So unless you want to go break into airgas and steal a bunch of oxygen tanks first (etc) you need someone to come up with the couple of thousand bucks you need for the gear, gear that can't be easily traced back to you if you leave it on the scene.

People like this find it really hard to get a bank loan. So they go talk to their friendly neighborhood loan shark. 20-40% for a week to a month is just fine. They'll be back in another month or two when they have spent all their money and need to go do another job.