Jon's Glorious Karma Character Generation System, beyond BeCKS Options

[Kagetenshi]

Your words of encouragement are appreciated! The view count keeps going up, but it’s always good to know for certain that it isn’t just bots. Plus, what kind of old-timer would I be if I didn’t pick up 16-year-old threads like they were current and ongoing? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

But yeah, it always rankled in the back of my mind that things like S3CKS were at 70-80% completion, clearly usable but where you’d run into unfinished stuff all the time (like Edges/Flaws, Otaku, and the still-unfinished Shifters). Whatever happens with the project writ large, I’m determined to increase the quantity of stuff someone can just pick up and use.

~J

[Tiralee]

As an aside, I'd steal someone's kidneys and sell them on the black market if NSCRG had working Ally Sprits and less crashing. [All praise to Mcmackie!]

Please continue the development Kagetenshi, stuff like this keeps the system alive.

-Tir

[tisoz]

[*]Bad Karma, Cursed Karma: these represent bets that a campaign won’t last long.

These are 2 of my favorite flaws as player OR GM. Simple mechanics: no need for the GM to
-work them into the game
-remember the character had the flaw in order to work it into the game
-expand the context "to justify the cost"

Bad Karma: Karma Pool just takes longer to accrue. It can favor hoping for a long campaign, where the player gets more spendable karma and doesn't wind up with a game killing amount of Karma Pool.

Cursed Karma: I interpret it as any time karma pool is used, roll 2D6 and on snake eyes, opposite the desired result occurs.

[Kagetenshi]

These are 2 of my favorite flaws as player OR GM. Simple mechanics: no need for the GM to
-work them into the game
-remember the character had the flaw in order to work it into the game
-expand the context "to justify the cost"

I agree, and I have a stack of characters with the flaws to prove it (only one of which I’ve regretted), but it sure makes it difficult to come up with a cost.

Bad Karma: Karma Pool just takes longer to accrue. It can favor hoping for a long campaign, where the player gets more spendable karma and doesn't wind up with a game killing amount of Karma Pool.

This depends. The thing is, in my experience high-level Shadowrun starts using Karma Pool as a resource—you can take risks because you have KP to fall back on, but you only have so much so you still want to constrain your risks—and that gets hard to do when teams have wildly disparate amounts of KP to work with over roughly any timescale.

Cursed Karma: I interpret it as any time karma pool is used, roll 2D6 and on snake eyes, opposite the desired result occurs.

That’s certainly more reasonable than the canonical system, which is 1d6. Might be too generous, but it’s a direction to explore.

But yes, I really like those properties you described initially. With a few hopefully-obvious exceptions the things I haven’t given even provisional costs to are things I don’t have immediate inspiration for proper costs for, not necessarily things I’m intent on leaving on the cutting room floor.

(Feedback appreciated!)

~J

[tisoz]

That’s certainly more reasonable than the canonical system, which is 1d6. Might be too generous, but it’s a direction to explore.
~J

My mistake, I do use the 1D6. (Not sure where 2D6 came from.) The I interpret it part refers to someone suggesting it applies to any karma usage, including raising Skills and/or Attributes. I left it out of the previous post because I didn't want to even think about such an interpretation.

"Oh, frag. You rolled a 1. Your Quickness is now 4 instead of 6."

[Kagetenshi]

Oh, yeah, no, definitely only pool use. The strict wording does mean that you roll once per point of pool used, so if you reroll a reroll (2 karma pool) you have to get past two Cursed Karma chances instead of just one (three instead of two counting the initial reroll), but I don’t think that’s the intention and at any rate I wouldn’t word an SR3R flaw that way.

~J

[Kagetenshi]

So after pondering I think my inclination might be -20KP for Bad Karma and -25KP for Cursed Karma? By pure comparison to skills costs it should come out as -21 and -30, but -30 now gets you all the way to Attribute 5 from Attribute +0… anyway, just an off-the-cuff valuation for the moment, trying to get this into a shape where I could have people use it.

~J