Why "Karma" ? Options

[Traul]

Karma makes more sense for this system than "experience" as you spend it.

In D&D, your power is dependent on how much experience you *have*. You don't spend it, so a long term adventurer has "lots of experience".

In shadowrun, your power is dependent on how much karma you have *spent*. If they called it experience instead of karma, yu would find that a long term shadowrunner has very little "experience" as he keeps spending it on improving abilities.

Philosophically, Karma makes more sense to describe something that you earn and spend.

It was not the case in earlier editions. You had to keep track of both your unspent karma to buy stuff and your total karma for the karma dice.

And I don't see how spending karma to learn makes any more sense. If anything, it should be the opposite: shooting people in the face for money burns karma and reaching a better understanding of the universe gives karma.

[Friendbot2000]

I really like the fact that they used Karma instead of XP. One of the things I love about Shadowrun is the sheer amount of customization you can do with your character. Karma is an excellent vehicle for that customization. Instead of going up a "level" you improve your skills with karma, which to me seems a lot more fun and less tedious than searching for that perfect feat or power like in D&D when you level up. I think they did a really good job choosing this kind of skill improvement system. I would say that they did it just to be different, but I also think they added some ingenious aspects as well in terms of the effect on the overall character improvement system.

[Kirk]

I really like the fact that they used Karma instead of XP. One of the things I love about Shadowrun is the sheer amount of customization you can do with your character. Karma is an excellent vehicle for that customization. Instead of going up a "level" you improve your skills with karma, which to me seems a lot more fun and less tedious than searching for that perfect feat or power like in D&D when you level up. I think they did a really good job choosing this kind of skill improvement system. I would say that they did it just to be different, but I also think they added some ingenious aspects as well in terms of the effect on the overall character improvement system.

I like to think the basic team learned a lot from writing Aftermath.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

I have a strong preference to Classless systems as it lets me grow my character in any direction I want, even from the start. I hated Star Wars D20 in all it's flavors due to the fact that I wasn't a "Back Of Beyond Tramp Freighter Captain" like in D6, instead I was a "Level 7 Scoundrel, Level 2 Flying Ace, Level 1 Gunslinger" or some such thing.

Of all the D20 iterations, Star Wars SAGA was by far my favorite. Yes, it is a class-based system, but the feats list and talents list gave you enough customization that the name of the classes could be completely ignored when creating any concept.

[Wounded Ronin]

Is there some explanation (in-game or not) for the use of the term "Karma" for the game´s experience pionts ? What the devs had in mind when they came up with it?

Coz 80s.

[Manunancy]

In portuguese (also a latin language), both of those are feminine nouns.

As I'm learning french right now to request an immigrant visa for Canada I find amusing that english native speakers have some difficult learning french considering that more than half of english words were stolen, er, borrowed from french words. Seriously, anytime I learn a new french word that is not similar to a portuguese word, I think if there is something similar in english, if there is, there's a 99% chance of both words sharing the same meaning.

French, italian, spanish and portuguese are all offshoots from latin - no wonder the genders are the same. English was also heavily influenced by french for two reasons : the french-speaking norman lords. The influence is obivious in the pork/pig, mutton/sheep case, beef/ox : the meat is named in french (by the lord who eats it) and the animal in germanic or celtic by the peasant. While in french both the meat and the animal use the same word. Second reason is that for quite a long time french was the language of culture and diplomacy in europe.

Though as far as similar wordings go, the french and and english similitude can also come from a germanic or celtic root that was retained in both french and english.

I've read somewhere ancient franch defined as 'soldier's latin spoken with a thick gaul accent'. Which is probably close to truth.

[Ascalaphus]

I think Karma tied in with something that was emphasized a lot in earlier days: that many runners dislike the corporations, and consider themselves rebels, even though they also work for the corporations.

That many runners considered themselves good people in a shitty world, forced to take jobs from corporations due to circumstances. But that because most of their work was against other corporations, that mitigated their guilt somewhat; at least *an* evil corporation is being hurt.

[Wounded Ronin]

I think Karma tied in with something that was emphasized a lot in earlier days: that many runners dislike the corporations, and consider themselves rebels, even though they also work for the corporations.

That many runners considered themselves good people in a shitty world, forced to take jobs from corporations due to circumstances. But that because most of their work was against other corporations, that mitigated their guilt somewhat; at least *an* evil corporation is being hurt.

I agree. It's a cultural aspect of 80s cyberpunk. That's why your sourcebook needs native american hipsters.

[Warlordtheft]

When I was young I didn't understand why english speakers kept putting Le/La in front of every french words they tell (even the ones that take a L', like Amour for exemple, come one that grammar rule is dumb !). It's like saying "the" in front of each word you use, that's kind of stupid. I guessed now it's how french is taught (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Fixed it for you! Yes that is how foreign languages in the 80's and 90's was taught.


PS: I took german in the late 80's when in High school.

[Hound]

Actually a lot of initiate powers still use Karma

Anything to be different... such as the use of the feminine pronoun throughout all the books instead of the standard male pronoun. So PC of them...

Strictly speaking though, Karma is somewhat fitting. To be true to the concept of the word, however, characters would earn good Karma and bad Karma and it would work similar to Edge (though knowing when to apply the bad Karma would be tricky) but then character advancement would have to be handled another way

Actually not necessarily. The concept of Karma does not always have "good" and "bad" associated with it, that's something that was mainly added by western culture. The Buddha described "karma" as more like a residue of existence that builds up in a consciousness, (or something like that, it's been a long time since I studied Buddhism at all) not necessarily evil, but something that must be worked through/let go of before the person can enter Nirvana. Hinduism, which is the origin of the word, may have a more good/evil association I'm not sure.

Anyways, if you think of it like that, Karma being simply the energy that a person acquires on the path through life, then it's a pretty good fit for the measure of a person's growth.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

While we (the western cultures) might say good karma and bad karma, everything that you do is karma. And the whole point is to balance your karma until your good deeds are balanced with your evil deeds, then you become enlightened, or something like that.

[CanRay]

Damn... I have to be more evil then.

Well, I'm off to go kick kittens.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Damn... I have to be more evil then.

Well, I'm off to go kick kittens.

That is not really EVIL per se... just a good common practice for those who are allergic...

[Bigity]

There were other games that used 'karma' as opposed to other methods of tracking character development as well.

Marvel Super Heroes, for example (the FASERIP one). And indeed in that game, you got Karma for being good, and lost it for being bad. You couldn't lose what you had spent, but you could go negative, which prevented you from improving your stats until you did more 'good'. This affected teams as well, as they shared certain amounts of karma.

It didn't work all that great, for example, the Punisher NEVER would have improved anything, Wolverine regularly would have pissed off the X-Men by losing team karma points, but it was an interesting alternative to straight experience points.

[CanRay]

That is not really EVIL per se... just a good common practice for those who are allergic...

And I am allergic to them...

Damn, now I need a new evil thing to do...

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

And I am allergic to them...

Damn, now I need a new evil thing to do...

There's always Puppies...

[CanRay]

I like puppies...

[Ascalaphus]

"Karma" also hints that maybe some jobs that pay less (because the downtrodden masses are poor) may have bigger non-monetary rewards. A few extra points of Karma on a hooding run instead of a juicy nuyen payout can be nice too.

[Paul]

"Karma" also hints that maybe some jobs that pay less (because the downtrodden masses are poor) may have bigger non-monetary rewards. A few extra points of Karma on a hooding run instead of a juicy nuyen payout can be nice too.

Yeah. It all depends on the game you're playing. I've traditionally been really stingy with karma, and liberal with cash. I can take your fancy grade A bang bang. I can trash your cyber gizmo's and run up in you any time I need or want to as the GM. But Karma...That stuff is a game changer.

So I am actually changing the way I do things. In my current campaign I'll be real liberal with Karma...well as liberal as I can get. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) And I'm going to cash starve them. Sort of a GM social experiment. I'm also going to pay much closer attention to street cred, street rep and continue how I deal with their contacts. (I have a great system in place for this.)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I like puppies...

Yeah, so do I. Just throwing out suggestions...
How about Marmots?

[Ascalaphus]

Yeah. It all depends on the game you're playing. I've traditionally been really stingy with karma, and liberal with cash. I can take your fancy grade A bang bang. I can trash your cyber gizmo's and run up in you any time I need or want to as the GM. But Karma...That stuff is a game changer.

So I am actually changing the way I do things. In my current campaign I'll be real liberal with Karma...well as liberal as I can get. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) And I'm going to cash starve them. Sort of a GM social experiment. I'm also going to pay much closer attention to street cred, street rep and continue how I deal with their contacts. (I have a great system in place for this.)

I've wanted to run a more "swashbuckler" style campaign, with an easy-come-easy-go attitude towards equipment. It'd be easier to get replacements and get new stuff, but it also frequently gets confiscated/lost/broken.

I'm not sure how well it'd work though, equipment/implants are such a huge part of stats that it's not very interchangeable. Maybe it'd work better in a game system where skills were more clearly dominant over equipment, where equipment quality and ratings aren't such a big deal.

[Wounded Ronin]

I remember how in 3rd ed if you gave karma for everything they said you should at the back of the sourcebook, the karma awards became huge.

[Snow_Fox]

I think 'karma' and how it was awarded was a gentleway back in the late 90's to get the players to be 'good.' Since there were no alignments so to get the job done you might actually be better to be ruthless- on D&D terms Evil, the karma awards tried to gently press you to be moral.

[CanRay]

So you shot bad people in the face for money to make the world a better place. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Ol' Scratch]

Other posters already nailed the primary reason. The original designers were basically making D&D set in a cyberpunk setting, but wanted to distance themselves from those mechanics as much as they could while also trying to interject as much flavor into the game mechanics as possible. Using "Karma" in place of "Experience" was an easy way of doing both of those things, and changing it so that experience points were a currency instead of just a measuring stick was an evolution of that. You can see that philosophy in lots of other areas, such as magic swords (adding their enchantment bonus to your rolls) becoming weapon foci (which add their 'Force' to your rolls).

And that's really all there is to it. There have been attempts, both officially and unofficially, to define it better and even to incorporate the good/bad ideology with it, but most of the time they just end up even more convoluted and awkward.

One idea I had some time ago, which I borrowed from another game system (Feng Shui I think? I don't know, it's been a long time) was separating the two concepts a bit. Your "Karma" would be the grand total you earned and used to advance your character, but each point you gained would be split between Good and Bad Karma when the GM rewarded them. Then, as a replacement for Edge (which I absolutely loathe), you'd be able to take a risk and use your Karma Dice to influence your rolls. You'd roll a black d6 (bad) and a white d6 (good), and depending on which one of your Karma subtotals was higher, you'd subtract one from the other, with the result being either a dice pool modifier or hit modifier depending on which worked out better after playtesting it enough. Hmm, on reflection that doesn't sound quite right, but I can't find my notebook to save my life. Bah. I'm pretty sure additional dice were used somehow, but I'm drawing a blank right now.

Anyway, I've wandered off what I was saying as usual. In the end, it's just a character advancement currency with a fancy name, with a few legacy uses beyond that such as feeding free spirits and the like. Unless you really want to get down to it and readjust the way everything works, it's best to just accept it for what it is and not put too much stock on the word "Karma." It could have just as easily been "Insight" or "Epiphany."