Why buy life styles?, make them serve a purpose Options

[Ascalaphus]

In any case, in the Social-Political Intrigue game that Vampire is, if you have no social-political power, you're losing. If you're a new player, you have no social-political power. I fail to see how anyone can see this as being OK (oh, wait, the winners think its ok, because they're winning).

My LARP experience is very limited, and I'm not sure the same political "principles" apply in LARP that apply in a given pen and paper group. A major difference would be than pen and paper groups are usually a party of characters that consider each other to be better allies than most of the NPCs.

There are few/no clans without at least a single politically useful discipline, and there are a lot of counters to Dominate;
- Generation / reasing your generation with Thaumaturgy (can't dominate someone with better generation)
- Your own Dominate
- Obfuscate/Stealth (can't dominate what you don't know is there)
- Not making eye contact (Obtenebration, or investing in blind-fighting; avoiding eye contact in conversation, blindfolds, scratching out their eyes)
- Making sure people know you'll take revenge afterwards
- Allies who protect you/take revenge (the enemy of my enemy is an ally, and dominate is a 1:1 power)

Anyway, political power != mental disciplines; it's mostly the player's social skills that determine effectiveness. If someone has lots of disciplines but no real social skills, you can probably recruit enough allies to get rid of that person without personal risk. And if they have serious social skills, then they don't need as many disciplines to run the show.

Also, if you want "fair" balance, you should let new players start with the same amount of XP/karma that existing characters have; this is true in all games.

(And you shouldn't underestimate the political weight of being able to certainly physically kill another character if they piss you off.)

[Mercer]

I thought the thread was asking "why buy permanent lifestyles," but it seems now like people are defending the idea of having lifestyles at all. Is there really anyone who holds the opposite position?

Actually, I believe the OP was suggesting giving each level fo Lifestyle certain mechanical benefits (Edge refresh or bonus Karma related), but it's quickly become a topic why characters should have lifestyles.

I've been playing devil's advocate, for two reasons:

One, I think it's possible there may be valid, roleplaying based reasons why a character would choose a lower-than-low lifestyle. (I've been lumping Squatter in with Streets on the theory that most GM's have the same problem with both.)

The second reason is, if a player's reason for not buying a lifestyle is neither valid or roleplaying based, then the problem isn't going to be solved by making them buy a lifestyle. (Although it may be solved by killing their character in their sleep.)

Now:

In support of the second position, all I can say is, if a player absolutely refuses to make any effort in roleplaying his character, the problem runs much deeper than whether or not said character is paying Lifestyle. You can make them pay rent, but depriving them of 2k a month is going to be of dubious comfort. (Or, to put another way, you can teach a chicken to play the piano but you can't make it love music.)

In support of the first position, all we really have to do is 1) come up with a character personality that a Streets or Squatter lifestyle makes sense for, and 2) assume that the character is willing to put up with the (admittedly monumental) difficulties associated with it. Neither of these things are easy, but I don't think either of them are impossible, either.

Does that mean that all characters don't have to pay lifestyle costs because there is no downside associated with it? Of course not. (If someone wants to argue that point they are free to, but I don't see it.) All I'm saying is, it's not unimaginable.

[3278]

Street is a perfectly legitimate lifestyle.

I absolutely agree that Street can be a perfectly legitimate lifestyle. If your character lives on the streets, that's the lifestyle he should take. [Although to be fair, most people who live on the streets actually have something closer to a Squatter lifestyle; whatever.] If your character lives in a nice house and goes to cool parties and has a nice entertainment system, he should have the High lifestyle, which costs him a particular amount of money.

From my perspective, there's no need to have a mechanical bonus for the cost of a lifestyle; the lifestyle is based on the character's choices, and has a particular monetary cost, and that's as far as it needs to go, in my opinion. You already get karma for being in character; what more do you deserve?

[Karoline]

I agree that Street is a legitimate lifestyle, but I think alot of people forget that there are consequences to it, many of which I've tried to point out as have others. These consequences are a mechanical reason why 'you should have a (decent) lifestyle.' beyond simple roleplay.

The truly original point of it stemmed from the idea that in order for a sammy to be effective, she must spend every last nuyen that she comes across on new ware and more bullets/guns. This presented the idea that a sammy was put at a large disadvantage when considering picking up a good lifestyle for RP reasons. A mage on the other hand (Goes the idea) doesn't have to worry about money expenses any, and so can choose to RP his character more freely as he doesn't have to consider the mechanical cost having a good lifestyle will have on him.

Personally, if this concern is valid, I think that making lifestyles more useful, or giving them mechanical benefits such as edge refreshes or bonus karma are the absolute worse way to balance them, as the mage will get a bonus without effort, and the sammy will have to pick between the bonus and the ware.

Think of it like this: How many mages choose to spend karma on RP spells such as healthy glow or detox? I'm sure there are some, just as there are some sammies who have high lifestyles, but the number is likely small. Why? Simple, because they have to give up their main advancement resource, karma, to achieve this RP, and is thus functionally equivalent to a sammy giving up their advancement resource, nuyen, to achieve RP in the form of providing themselves creature comforts that most metahumans would desire.

The main difference is that failing to get a good lifestyle has strong consequences, while failing to get healthy glow has no consequences, and that is the root of the sammy complaint here.

Please note that all that was said as objective observation on what I believe the original view was here. Personally I don't think that sammies suffer that unduly by giving up 2k nuyen a month to at least keep a roof over their head, though it is a shame that I don't see many mages picking up spells purely for RP purposes, such as a drunkard mage who takes Detox to keep himself sober when needed (It would be very easy to not play a drunkard, or even when playing one to play down hangovers and drunkenness) or healthy glow just because .

[Mercer]

Well, there is a karma bonus for good roleplaying, which covers a lot of what we're talking about here. Under Karma Awards, Good Roleplaying is worth 1-2 points, and impressing the group with humor or drama is worth 1-2 points. So a player that is roleplaying and contributing could earn up to 4 points more per run than a player that sees his or her character only as a mechanical avatar that unlocks certain tactical avenues of the game.

The discussion usually doesn't get framed in that way, but there is some validity to the point that roleplaying your character is more mechanically advantageous than worrying soley about what is the most mechanically advantageous. I think because the players that enjoy the roleplaying aspect of the game would do it even if there weren't any mechanical awards for it, and the players that aren't interested in roleplaying are seldom willing to "fake it" long enough to rack up any serious karma awards. (Although I think it's a fallacy to think of it in terms of roleplayers and non-roleplayers, since most groups are made up of players who have both rp and mechanical concerns in varying ratios at varying times.)

[Tsuul]

Don't sammies swim in karma compared to mages?

[Karoline]

Don't sammies swim in karma compared to mages?

Yeah, which is part of the supposed problem. A nuyen RP reward would be much more attractive to sammies than a karma one.

[Jericho Alar]

Please note that all that was said as objective observation on what I believe the original view was here. Personally I don't think that sammies suffer that unduly by giving up 2k nuyen a month to at least keep a roof over their head, though it is a shame that I don't see many mages picking up spells purely for RP purposes, such as a drunkard mage who takes Detox to keep himself sober when needed (It would be very easy to not play a drunkard, or even when playing one to play down hangovers and drunkenness) or healthy glow just because .

(most of this post was, in my opinion, an excellent summary, so I cut it to just the part I wanted to elaborate on.)

it depends heavily on the game, in a game where a typical team pulls in 300k (about 60k each) in a month, even a medium probably isn't an undue cost. (high is pushing it period for sammies mechanically, sadly; unless you're at the point where all your mages are buying luxury lifestyles as second summer homes.)

but in a game where a typical team is pulling about 30k a month (so, like, successful gangers/wageslaves, getting 6k each a mo. or so) - the mages are still probably going to be able to afford a low lifestyle, a bad apartment, a small rowhouse, etc. whereas unless the GM is intentionally restricting Karma to the same extent (so, say, 3-4 karma a month) the tech characters will be dropping every ¥ to keep near the mages in progression; and will be in squatter lifestyles at best, moving from coffin hotel to coffin hotel in puyallup or renton.

kind of a long winded way to say 'cash is relative!' (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I do wish more mages took more fluff spells, but I'm not sure there's a way to really incentivize it further.*


*RP karma awards would theoretically already make them 'free' over a long enough period of time.

[Draco18s]

Also, if you want "fair" balance, you should let new players start with the same amount of XP/karma that existing characters have; this is true in all games.

Obviously you don't understand the nation wide WoD LARPing that goes on. New characters (either new players or old ones with new characters) don't get bonus exp.

Ever.

Because otherwise you'd have to figure out how much EXP to give them, and in any case, they'd run out of things to spend it on (what? all of your attributes are at max? when did you do that? a year ago? damn...)

It's like half the fun of playing is completely fucking the new characters.

Yeah, there are ways around it, I'm just saying it is something you have to consider.

Oh, my character has a lifestyle, as normal, medium, as per my norm.

[Mercer]

Yeah, which is part of the supposed problem. A nuyen RP reward would be much more attractive to sammies than a karma one.

I like both, but I tend to prefer Karma. And really it comes out to about the same thing, and extra dice or two (at a time) into the pools.

Money and karma are both advancement mechanics. As a player I like karma more (even for sammies) because I see it as something intrinsic to the character. Karma ups your skills and atts, and that's a part of your character getting better at things. Money is usually something external to the character, but still important. (Cyber and bioware tends to blur the line a little, because the things you buy with money do go inside your character, and are more difficult to get out as opposed to say a gun you can lose or a car you can crash.) Most systems have this twofold path of advancement, some sort of experience mechanic on one side and and some sort of gear mechanic on the other.

I tend to design my characters first as the things themselves (although I would include cyberware in this calculation) and then add gear to that. I don't think that my way is superior to any other way, but I do think that as a player it makes me more resilient to those particular runs where you end up losing all your gear and having to make do with whatever you can scrounge up. (I will say in defense of GMs who are accused of being dicks when they take away a character's gear, most of the times I've lost my gear it's been my own goddamned fault, one way or the other.)

I've played a lot of sammies over the years, or a lot of physically-based characters. My last character in SR2 fell into the diminishing returns camp where he needed 2.2m (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) to get squeeze one more point of reaction into the build, my main character in SR3 was only one piece of cyberware different from the SR2 street sam archetype (Dermal 1 and Plastic Bonelacing vs. Dermal 2), and never upgraded anything. Sometimes I make a character with advancement in mind (why else take at chargen Wired I if not to crawl up out of the mire?) and sometimes I like my character right out of the gate and and fine with making incremental changes with Karma or bits of gear as the campaign moves along.

I haven't really thought about what lifestyles I've seen in play, but it seems like Middle is probably the most common, with Low being slightly more popular than High. I can think of a handful of characters who have started with Squatter or Streets, but none that maintained them once they got that First Run cash in their pockets, and I can think of only one character that ever bought a Luxury lifestyle (and that was an outright retirement buy. I mean, once you got 10m (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) , why not?)

[Cthulhudreams]

This has to do with your gaming style, not the game. We have an understanding that magically/ubersocially controlling how someone else plays their character is bad.

Whhhaaatttt - you're cutting a deal to restrain the power of an ability relative to other archetypes, then jumping on me when I do the same thing. How dumb.

Anyway controlling other vampires is dumb, you control warren buffet, get him to give you millions of dollars then beat people up.

[3278]

If the problem is that some kinds of characters need money and others need karma, why not allow the solution of trading between them?

[Mercer]

I've never been wild about the Kash for Karma mechanics, 3278, mainly because karma is a metagame mechanic and cash is an in-game mechanic. I'm not wild about characters trading transcendental life essences for existential goodies.

I know as a general rule mages need their karma and sammies need their cash but I've never had a problem spending money with my mages and I've never been at a loss for what to spend my karma on with my sammies. (Full disclosure: All my long term characters have been physical types though.)

I still say the best way to solve the wild disparity between team members is to have the sammie pay half what he would pay for a Low Lifestyle to piggyback on the mage's High Lifestyle. Almost every SR game I have played in, if I've played in it long enough, has taken elements from The Odd Couple.

[secondrate]

I think perhaps the issue (and the interpretations of same) can truly be boiled down to a couple of simple points:

1. Are the existing benefits as given in RAW or RC sufficient for the character to justify forking out X amount of cash every month? Do the benefits of the lifestyle fit with the idea of the character as you are playing? Does it make sense for for your mage to live in a wheeliebin (yes for shammies living with some urban totem, not for someone following the Wuxing tradition) or for your razorboi to live the international jet-set? Do you, your GM and your fellow players benefit from your choices (roleplaying options, storyline direction, etc, etc)? This leads to:

2. Your group. Not the characters. You. Your mate Adrian. Sam the GM. His girlfriend. Mike, who no one really likes but you invite him anyway 'cos he loves playing hackers, (when you all hate it) and he always brings good snacks. Y'know the people you get together with every week (or fortnight, or month, or...) and play a little bit of Shadowrun. It comes down to your dynamic, what y'all expect to get out of a game and the degree to which you're willing to tweak the rules. A group who leans heavy on the roleplay side of the scale will probably end up forking out the nuyen for the digs that are appropriate for the campaign/group/whatever. A group that leans heavily on the big-guns-and-explosions side will care less about where you are resting your head (this is where the realism question rears its ugly head, but that's a shouting match for another thread and another day).

I personally play in a roleplay-leaning group, and a good GM (within my own bias) will find a way to fit with the overwhelming consensus of the group as to what needs to be done. Perhaps the razorboi is running out of dosh and can't keep up, suddenly the runs start paying more. Now the mage is getting too wealthy, flaunting his money, so some nefarious thief manages to sneak into his apartment, past his high class security and steal several priceless pieces of art, leaving no evidence behind. Now the team has a new adventure to track down the stolen artwork, and the trail leads to Berlin and Saeder-Krupp HQ. They promptly abandon the art 'cos no amount of paint and canvas is worth pissing off Lowfyr.

Shadowrun is at it's heart a dynamic game able to be adapted to your style. Why buy lifestyles? Whatever reason you can justify. Everyone needs somewhere to hang their hat.

[3278]

I've never been wild about the Kash for Karma mechanics, 3278, mainly because karma is a metagame mechanic and cash is an in-game mechanic. I'm not wild about characters trading transcendental life essences for existential goodies.

They're...tithing money to churches, and giving to charity. Or winning money at the track. Yeah, that's it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif) I'm with you: I don't particularly like the idea, although if a player were feeling its necessity deeply enough, I wouldn't sweat it.

I know as a general rule mages need their karma and sammies need their cash but I've never had a problem spending money with my mages and I've never been at a loss for what to spend my karma on with my sammies. (Full disclosure: All my long term characters have been physical types though.)

I've never particularly found it to be a problem. Different types of people have different types of needs; I don't find that particularly problematic, either.

[Draco18s]

They're...tithing money to churches, and giving to charity.

My group's GM has only allowed Cash -> Karma, not the other way. And you had to find your own company to donate to, one that made sense to grant you personally Karma. A toxic mage, for instance, could donate to a garbage dump.

[Ol' Scratch]

Uh, Karma to Cash is even easier to explain. It includes winning a Quick Pick lottery or even just finding a credstick on the street.

[Draco18s]

How does one decide to go looking for lost credsticks? Or decide to win the lottery?

Karma isn't luck.

[Mercer]

It makes the player make a very odd choice. "Do I get better at Electronics or do I win the lottery?"

I don't think that using the Karma for Cash mechanic is the end of the world, it's just not one of those rules I particularly cared for. (I wasn't wild about Hand of God either, although I have mellowed somewhat over the years.)

[Ascalaphus]

Obviously you don't understand the nation wide WoD LARPing that goes on. New characters (either new players or old ones with new characters) don't get bonus exp.

Ever.

Because otherwise you'd have to figure out how much EXP to give them, and in any case, they'd run out of things to spend it on (what? all of your attributes are at max? when did you do that? a year ago? damn...)

Don't be rude. I understand this.

It makes sense to make new characters start from scratch; otherwise you might as well give no XP to the old ones. Of course, if your character has no sire, no mentor, no allies etc, yeah, you're an easy target alright. Why don't you have those things?

It's like half the fun of playing is completely fucking the new characters.

If some players make a habit of hazing new characters (I've heard about that), then consider the players, not the game system. If they're jerks, they'll be jerks regardless of what game you play.

Randomly bullying characters isn't very good politics; you create enemies you don't need. Also, most games take place in Elysium, you might want to be careful in using disciplines there.

[Ascalaphus]

Whhhaaatttt - you're cutting a deal to restrain the power of an ability relative to other archetypes, then jumping on me when I do the same thing. How dumb.

This isn't limited to Vampire; we use this principle in all games I'm involved in.

1) You don't ruin other players' fun.
2) You can't force other people to play their character in a way that they don't want to.


This means there are limits to how far you can go with mind control powers - even as GM. PCs aren't immune, but the players must consider how far you can go while keeping the game fun for everyone.

[tagz]

If I was going to allow karma -> cash or cash -> karma I would likely do it via a NPC mage that buys and sells "existential energies" for a profit.

[Ol' Scratch]

How does one decide to go looking for lost credsticks? Or decide to win the lottery?

Karma isn't luck.

Yeah, and you can't spend karma either. Except in Shadowrun, where you can. If you're spending it for cash, that means you've likely done deeds with it where the universe decides to repay you. Consciously you didn't go "looking" for the lost credstick, you just happened upon it as the universe repays you for whatever it is you've done in the past to earn the karma you're "spending" on it. Maybe you helped a little old lady across the road and, bam, ten minutes later you stumble upon a credstick. Or whatever else. The fact that you, as a player, chose to "spend" your karma in that fashion is completely unrelated to the actual result of that spending. In other words, OOC actions != IC actions. Which one would think is pretty obvious.

Using your logic, karma isn't experience points either. Yet it gets spent that way more often than not.

[Ascalaphus]

Karma -> Cash:

1) Sell it to a free spirit who will not be mentioned further
2) "Instead of training, you spend time doing small jobs. You don't learn anything new, but it's some pocket money."

Cash -> Karma:
1) The best teachers money can buy (have to spend the karma immediately)

I'm sure more rationalizations are possible.

I'm still intrigued by the idea of only allowing cash-karma trades between PCs; I wonder what the "market price" would be.

[Draco18s]

It makes sense to make new characters start from scratch; otherwise you might as well give no XP to the old ones. Of course, if your character has no sire, no mentor, no allies etc, yeah, you're an easy target alright. Why don't you have those things?

I don't play, I can't answer the question.

If some players make a habit of hazing new characters (I've heard about that), then consider the players, not the game system. If they're jerks, they'll be jerks regardless of what game you play.

Randomly bullying characters isn't very good politics; you create enemies you don't need. Also, most games take place in Elysium, you might want to be careful in using disciplines there.

I'll admit that the system from 0 exp for everyone involved generally turns out well.

Yeah, and you can't spend karma either. Except in Shadowrun, where you can. If you're spending it for cash, that means you've likely done deeds with it where the universe decides to repay you. Consciously you didn't go "looking" for the lost credstick, you just happened upon it as the universe repays you for whatever it is you've done in the past to earn the karma you're "spending" on it. Maybe you helped a little old lady across the road and, bam, ten minutes later you stumble upon a credstick. Or whatever else. The fact that you, as a player, chose to "spend" your karma in that fashion is completely unrelated to the actual result of that spending. In other words, OOC actions != IC actions. Which one would think is pretty obvious.

Using your logic, karma isn't experience points either. Yet it gets spent that way more often than not.

If we ignore karma for cash here for a minute and look at all of the ways karma can be spent (including through free spirits) all of them can be seen as a choice by the character:

Learning new active skills ("I'll take a class")
Learning new knowledge skills ("I want to know more about stuff")
Training attributes ("I'll hit up the gym")
Resolving a flaw ("I want to get that monkey off my back")
Learning spells ("I need to memorize this")
Binding foci ("I want this working for me")
Voluntary choice in exchange for some of the magic of a free spirit
Initiate ("I want to be better at magic")
Buy contacts ("I'd like to make a few more friends")
Acquiring a new trait (gamemaster awards it if it is appropriate, which is still based on something the character has done)
Become infected with HMHVV

I don't think I missed any.
With the exception of becoming infected, all of them are based on something the character did. Of the remaining, only acquiring a new positive quality is done without conscious choice, but is not chosen by the player either.