 Intiate Grades ... who's the big gun?, Oddball, but. |
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 Dec 1 2004, 05:31 AM
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#76
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Runner  Group: Members Posts: 2,751 Joined: 8-August 03 From: Neighbor of the Beast Member No.: 5,375  |
Not as shocking as the Sam Verner thing. Gods, he is such a dipshit. As for the other debate...the point that stuck out for me was the idea that IEs and GDs don't adventure. They have thier minions run things. Well, running minions can be an adventure in itself. Much like a commander on the battlefield or the manager of a retail store that empolys high school and college students (or a 5 year old going to school, or a 13 year old with the first kiss, etc..) I'm not sure if I lost track of the thread drift but are we debating if Harlequin (and others) actually earn karma? If so, it seems to me that they must have done something karma worthy--and often--to live this long. What are they at? 30,000 years? More? The GDs got to sleep. The IEs had to suck it up and muddle through as best they could. Without a lot of mana. That's gotta be worth some karma. As for the GDs..well, they had to fight other dragons--physically or otherwise--thats worth points in my book. :) |
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Dec 1 2004, 05:32 AM
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#77
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Beetle Eater Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 4,797 Joined: 3-June 02 From: Oblivion City Member No.: 2,826 |
You mean, other than people improving their skills and attributes? Karma is the only method to raise such, and clearly people were learning and advancing (even magically). |
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Dec 1 2004, 05:32 AM
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#78
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,751 Joined: 8-August 03 From: Neighbor of the Beast Member No.: 5,375 |
Because otherwise no would ever improve. ;) |
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Dec 1 2004, 05:32 AM
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#79
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,006 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Because people actually improve their skills and attributes during the downtime? Edit: I'm getting old and slow. ~J |
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Dec 1 2004, 05:33 AM
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#80
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,751 Joined: 8-August 03 From: Neighbor of the Beast Member No.: 5,375 |
Opps, K10 beat me to it.
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Dec 1 2004, 07:05 AM
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#81
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 232 Joined: 19-October 04 Member No.: 6,773 |
No, I think its whats left of the old passion. Ysy wouldnt want Harly to put Thayla up. =) Im dying to play a questor in SR, but im the only one that knows the world well enough to run it around here. =( |
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Dec 1 2004, 07:32 AM
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#82
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,598 Joined: 15-March 03 From: Hong Kong Member No.: 4,253 |
Dunno, aren't shamans sorta questors. You follow a certain god, accept restrictions on your activities based on the attributes of the god, and you get more powers (totem advanteages) for it.
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Dec 1 2004, 01:49 PM
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#83
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,006 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Perhaps he got good and used to being the only big fish in the pond and wants to keep it that way? ~J |
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 Dec 1 2004, 02:21 PM
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#84
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 401 Joined: 7-June 02 From: Living with the straw sheep. Member No.: 2,850 |
I think the other option is the ED Mad Passion "Vestrial", it certainly sounds about right to me...and I think AH mentions something about it as well in his Files... As to the other debate... Karma is a mechanism for regulating PC development and improvement. PCs earn karma. NPCs get better when the GM says they do. The Karma mechanic - and virtually all XP mechanics - fall down when trying to represent character improvement and learning in ways that don't involve surviving stressful situations (ie 'adventures'). After all, if I want to learn Italian, I'll go to classes or get a teacher. I don't need to go on a shadowrun first to earn the karma, do I? But then, we're playing "Shadowrun" not "Class of 2064". |
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Dec 2 2004, 12:03 AM
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#85
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Guests |
Well, I'd say more, but it'd be a bannable offense. And I'm not quite ready to leave. |
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Dec 2 2004, 12:38 AM
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#86
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Beetle Eater Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 4,797 Joined: 3-June 02 From: Oblivion City Member No.: 2,826 |
Yes, actually you do have to succeed in some challenging goals to earn karma which you then spend to raise or learn Italian according to Shadowrun rules. And yes, NPCs do actually earn karma and use it - witness their karma pools, the ability of enchanters to make foci, and the forming of magical groups, ect. |
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Dec 2 2004, 12:52 AM
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#87
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Immortal Elf Group: Validating Posts: 7,999 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,890 |
Somehow I don't think "staying in character" award requires you to have been in a gunfight or to have had a challenging time figuring out one of those damnable Rubik's Cubes.
Should you, however, solve one of those damnable Rubik's Cubes, you'll have earned a point of Karma for the "smarts" award. If someone decides to do something different from the routine, such as travel to an exotic locale or simply take a vacation, that might warrant a "motivation" award based upon the description thereof. Hell, if you're just in the right place at the right time in order to use some skill you possess, that warrants a point of karma for the "right place/right time" award. For crying out loud, if *you* (not your character) makes everyone else fall to the ground rolling, your character deserves a point of karma for the "humor" award. I honestly don't know why some of you are so dead-set on thinking that karma is only earned from performing mind-boggling or death-defying feats. That is not backed-up anywhere except in regards to specific types of karma rewards. Just read over the "Awarding Karma" section of the game on SR3 p. 244. Then read through some of the sample awards in the published adventures/runs/campaigns/whatever you want to call them (and, again, take note that not once will you find anything that even comes close to saying that players don't deserve any points if they're already really powerful, or that the adventure wasn't much of a challenge for them -- they may earn one or two *more* points if it is, but again, those are conditional awards). |
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Dec 2 2004, 01:00 AM
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#88
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Beetle Eater Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 4,797 Joined: 3-June 02 From: Oblivion City Member No.: 2,826 |
Non player characters cannot earn Roleplaying Karma Awards, such as Humor, Stroy Breaking, Smarts, Staying In-Character ect as only player action casues those from my reading of the rules.
I hope your not talking to me, because that would mean you're not reading what I'm typing. Challenging != Mind-Boggling or Death-Defying |
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Dec 2 2004, 01:55 AM
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#89
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Immortal Elf Group: Validating Posts: 7,999 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,890 |
Nope, I was referring to assorted others in this thread. And of course NPCs don't earn some rewards as part of a normal award-giving-out-thingie. The GM isn't responsible for that. Aside from the Humor one, however, they're almost all available to NPCs as much as they are PCs, even if it isn't necessarily the GM who's dishing those points out.
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Dec 2 2004, 12:25 PM
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#90
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 401 Joined: 7-June 02 From: Living with the straw sheep. Member No.: 2,850 |
[PONTIFICATING] :cyber: My point pertained to the realism of the karma mechanic, not to the game mechanics as they stand: To wit, I learned Italian by asking my wife a lot of very, very annoying questions over a period of about 3 months. My life at the time consisted of literally nothing that was at all "challenging". Hence my point. I was addressing the realism of the karma mechanic, not referring to how that mechanic functions in-game. -------------------------------- As to NPCs and Karma: The rules do not say that NPCs do in fact earn karma, they just imply that they earn karma. They have karma pools, can improve their skills etcetera etcetera. Granted, they don't say that NPCs do not earn karma. From a metagame perspective, karma is a means to control and measure the growth in power of a character, just as experience points are in a variety of other games. GMs award karma to characters (generally to PCs...). GMs have different criteria for awarding karma to characters. Some GMs have a checklist. Some GMs insist that the characters have "survived a challenge". Some GMs use karma awards as a way of encouraging characters to be moral or professional, or whatever. This thread has already demonstrated that there's a lot of disagreement about who gets karma and how. Ultimately, it all comes down to what an individual GM does in his/her game, and even the standard little list (Survival, Roleplaying, etcetera) can mean different things to different GMs. -------------------------------- To pretend to address the subject: Harlequin et. al. are defined (according to SR canon) as "untouchable" NPCs, and as being outside the rules. Harlequin's Back encourages the GM to "roll a bunch of dice" for Harlequin, mutter a lot, and then decide that H manages to do whatever needs to get done to make the adventure work. Comparing relative power between all of those characters is somewhat simpler...since they're all still alive, there can't be huge differences in personal power between them...otherwise they wouldn't all pussyfoot around each other like a man with a lantern in a gunpowder magazine. YMWV. [/PONTIFICATING] |
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Dec 2 2004, 12:31 PM
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#91
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Canon Companion Group: Members Posts: 8,021 Joined: 2-March 03 From: The Morgue, Singapore LTG Member No.: 4,187 |
You were training. Your Karma was already earned. Naturally, you did not have an adventure during training. |
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Dec 2 2004, 01:16 PM
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#92
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,326 Joined: 15-April 02 Member No.: 2,600 |
I suppose the biggest flaw I see in the idea that someone will gain karma and improve their skills for 2000 or 30,000 years is that there is no mechanic for the perishable nature of knowledge in SR (or for that matter, any other game I can think of).
That is to say, if Joe Dandelion-Blower has a rough time in the Dark Ages and has to up his Edged Weapons to 6 because the Visigoths don't like sissy boys (putting aside that this is all blatantly anti-elf racist stereotyping), and then he moves to Venice and doesn't have to pick up a sword for the next 1500 years, when he does find himself using a butter knife to defend the honor of a Waffle House waitress, he will still have a 6 in said skill, just as he did when he laid the sword down in 564. This to me, seems odd. Secondly, I take issue with the idea implicit in the IE mythology that immortality is a big thumbs up from the universe. I've seen too many episodes of the Twilight Zone, perhaps, that deal with the idea that immortality has a downside (and when you're talking about statless npcs with "high" double digit Initiate Grades, a downside of them being kind of mopey doesn't really seem to balance the slate) to buy the idea of the IEs as presented in SR. Most people have enough trouble getting through one lifetime, much less eons (though admittedly, I don't know any elves... who've revealed themselves to me). I would be much more in favor of IE's if they were broken down old men with the bodies of 20 year olds and the minds of 2 year olds. (And the idea of a toddler who was a Grade 88 Inititate does interest me, though I could not in good conscience make him statless. I'm just not wired that way. And it was also an episode of the Twilight Zone, anyway.) You might say, in their defense, "But they are not humans, they are elves. They are genetically fit for immortality. They can take it." Well on that point, to quote Josiah Bartlett, I conceed the high ground. Elves are ficitonal creatures, and fictional creatures behave as the fiction requires. I find that the IE's as written in SR are uninteresting to me, and so I am unlikely to be swayed by any argument in their favor (much as I expect anyone who likes IE's will not be swayed by this one). Its uninteresting to me because I can't relate to it; its a bridge to far in my suspension of disbelief. Morality seems so intergral to the idea of a human being, that to remove it would make whatever creature that would be completely alien, and not, say, Leonardo da Vinci with a slightly hipper rap. If IEs and dragons were written like Insect Spirits, "of a completely alien mindset, incomprehensible to humans", I would have less of a problem with it. The immediate jump in logic to make there (since this relates back to my primary complaint in the whole IE, GD thingamabob), is the idea of statless insect spirits. Which I imagine would be a hard idea to get funding for. Because Insect Spirits are Bad Guys, and its no fun pitting the pcs against a foe that they have absolutely no hope of affecting (at least, no fun for the pcs). IEs and GDs aren't Bad Guys, they're just there to deus ex soda machina plot points. Except I don't run games with Good Guys and Bad Guys, it's just a bunch of guys; and the characters I want to motivate plot are the ones the players are controlling. Its funny (not funny ha-ha) but if this was a D&D forum, I would be on the exact opposite side of the fence. I think one of the stupidest things D&D did-- and lets face it, that list is going to be long but distinguished-- was stat gods. Statted, Thor ceases to be the God of Thunder and instead becomes a challenging encounter for 4-6 characters level 35-40. But, as has been pointed out earlier, SR isn't D&D (though there is a point in very bad SR and very good D&D where they overlap; its not exactly sex and law school we're comparing here). What I am looking for in an SR game is not what I am looking for in a D&D game, or any high fantasy game. I come at the game from the other side, the underside, from the bottom up. The low fantasy side. Shadowrun can handle high fantasy just fine (it is an incredibly versatile system), but I'm just not interested in it. For me, SR works best where it is relatable to real life. The trials and tribulations of the average SR group is much more accessible to me than that of the average high fantasy group. No one's out to defeat Sauron or save the world from the forces of darkness in SR; their concerns look a lot like mine. They want to make rent, they want to not go to jail. To me, this is the strength of the low-fantasy game. Its immediate. Its one or two jumps away from real life. There's a point in high fantasy where you jump the shark, where the game just loses credibility. It varies from player to player and from group to group. With me, it starts just on this side of IE's. But thats just my opinion, I could be wrong. PS: I have realized in scribbling this that I have buried three or four movie or television references in there, and rather than go back and attribute them all-- as I did with the West Wing quote-- I'll just point out I know they're there and I'm not trying to get away with anything. |
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Dec 2 2004, 01:47 PM
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#93
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 401 Joined: 7-June 02 From: Living with the straw sheep. Member No.: 2,850 |
Part I: @Toturi - I think that's a little obtuse. Karma is awarded to characters for doing significant things. No one gave me karma, and I sure as hell didn't do anything significant or memorable that year. I definitely didn't sit around, waiting for enough profound s#!t to happen to me to have enough karma to study another foreign language. Karma != real life. (Unless you're a Hindu, but their take on it is rather different, neh?) Part II: I agree with Mercer. :spin: |
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Dec 2 2004, 04:04 PM
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#94
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 232 Joined: 19-October 04 Member No.: 6,773 |
I agree with mercer on the first part of his post about memory.
I disagree in that one of the things I love about shadowrun is the possibility of High Fantasy. I do like it when my players have a chance to affect the world. They may save it, damn it or something. I guess its that versatility tht makes SR so popular. |
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Dec 2 2004, 06:13 PM
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#95
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,408 Joined: 31-January 04 From: Reston VA, USA Member No.: 6,046 |
It seems like the whole argument's pointless unless people agree ahead of time on what definitions they're using.
Does karma represent
I can see an argument where people improve much more if they have to really work at it (i.e. in athletics, you learn more by competing against those better than you compared to only competing against wimps). But diligent, long-term practice can improve skills even without tough competition (albeit much more slowly). I would guess that IEs accumulate huge amounts of karma over time, but most of it gets either blown (hand of God incidents) or used on mundane stuff associated with day to day life. So, over 2,000 years Harly may well have adopted roles of farmer, soldier, politician, aristocrat, scientist, athlete, etc, etc and spent karma building up the associated skills of each. Maybe half his lifetime accumulated karma has gone toward stuff that's not even useful any more (language skill in Mesopotamian, etiquette skill in Renaissance Court politics, Build/repair manual printing presses, etc.) |
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Dec 2 2004, 06:14 PM
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#96
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Immortal Elf Group: Validating Posts: 7,999 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,890 |
All of the above. |
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Dec 2 2004, 06:23 PM
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#97
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,326 Joined: 15-April 02 Member No.: 2,600 |
The only house rule I eve came up with to represent perishable knowledge (and thats not to say its a good one), I'd let a pc lower a stat or skill and receive karma equal to buying that reduced rating. (Frinstance in 2ed, dropping a stat from 5 to 4 would net someone 4 points. Man stats were cheap in those days). These points were added into karma point total because the represented a redistribution of karma, rather than earning more.
No one ever did it because you were basically losing points on the trade (to increase the stat back to 5 would cost 5, so you'd lose 1 point to break even). The only time it would have been useful is if the character needed a few points of karma quick (such as, he needed to initiate before the next run to lose a geas), or if he had dumped a bunch of points into a dead end skill he later decided blew. If anyone had taken advantage of it, I might have put some limitations like it could only be done once every X amount of time, or so on, but since no one used it, it was never abused. Mainly I just wanted something to mechanically represent that unused skills sort of fade away, or that as you put effort into one area, another weakens. |
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Dec 2 2004, 06:39 PM
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#98
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,006 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Any living IE has Hand of Godded at most once.
~J |
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Dec 2 2004, 06:39 PM
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#99
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Traumatizing players since 1992 Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 3,282 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Las Vegas, NV Member No.: 220 |
because that's the exact number of times you can do it, ever! :) |
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Dec 2 2004, 06:51 PM
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#100
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 401 Joined: 7-June 02 From: Living with the straw sheep. Member No.: 2,850 |
Unless you're an 1337 immortal elf who doesn't stick to the rules...
[ Spoiler ]
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