Hey chums.

So the PCs in the game I run, bless their wicked little hearts, have really embraced this whole gritty antihero thing. They're not mass murderers or anything, per se, but they don't take prisoners and they've yet to show mercy to anyone. In the first session they ran down some surprised security guards with a van and backed over the survivor; in the second they accepted the surrender of some corpsec folks, disarmed them, and then executed them; recently they ran across some fairly helpless druggies in a warehouse they wanted to crash in, and put them all to the blade. They torture when they think they need to. They're all hard.

And they're doing it all in character and believably, and I love them for it. It's a nasty world, if I've got anything to say about it, and it seems they all agree. I'm certainly not looking to change this; in my mind heroic fantasy and cyberpunk ought to stay as far from each other as possible. My question, then, is on the nature of Karma.

Seems to me, and I may be way off-base here, that SR Karma goes beyond the standard concept of Experience as portrayed in That Other Game™ and reflects not just the accumulated knowledge of a character but a sort of cosmic debt thing, paying the character back for all their good deeds against the Evil Corps or whatnot. Witness the Hooper-Nelson and Hand of God rules, which aren't so much the sorts of things that Experience ought to be applicable to... Also witness that NPC baddies (villains?) end up with Threat Ratings instead of Karma pools (though the specifics of how that works out elude me at the moment).

Insight into the nature of Karma as reflected in the game system could be of use to me here. One of the players suggested perhaps another form of award (jokingly called Bad Mojo 'stead of Good Karma) and there might be something to be said for that, but I'm more curious as to how y'all interpret the game mechanic of Karma and whether it's tied to the "morality" of character action.

Thoughts?

In our games, it is tied to morality, hence my constant posts about doing the 'right thing' despite the settings.

However, I don't think it has anything to do with morality. Karma is 'grit' of humanity IMHO. The old geezer that just won't die (Hand of God) and has done more in a couple of years than most people do in a life time. But also, one step more than that, I see it as a cementation of destiny. In a world of ordinary people, the team is extra-ordinary, meant for great things but being tested along the way. Karma is the payment for abiding by their destiny (be it good or evil, for even evil acts are pre-destined at times). As you carry on with the extraordinary life you are meant to lead, your potential to stay to that destiny and become something great is your Karma. That's why players are so much more than anyone else, even straight out of Char-Gen. Perhaps everyone has the potential to have a great destiny, but only those who grabbed it when they were weak can begin that snowball roll that becomes an avalance in the fabric of time.

Sphynx

Karma is a silly name for what boils down to "experience."

If you take the extreme interpretation and assume that skills can only be increased through karma and karma can only be acquired through shadowruns, you have a lot of part-time runners.

My former gaming group tends to look at it the same way -- karma is handed out based on individual performance for humor, role-playing and so forth.

-Siege

i like the idea of karma and the karma pool, but i really feel you on this one. irl, karma basically means what goes around comes around. it even can be passed from generation to generation. but i hate the thought of it irl, i jsut like it in game terms.
i really feel there should be an experience point system, in addition to your karma pool. because as it is, if you go only by your deeds, an evil person would be punished rather than rewarded. they would gain in the good column and bad column (wich doesn't exist in shadowrun). by the most basic definition of karma irl, defeating a tough opponent would only give good karma if you were doing it as a good deed. which is basically saying that your skill would not improve. that is bull drek!
i cross out good karma and write in experience points. because that is waht it is. but then again, i rarely give out karma jsut for fighting, but that is probably more to do with the style if game i am in.
i still use karma pool though, i just reward it based on the experience pool, the same way it would be for good karma.
but if you change good karma to exp, you won't have a conflict anymore.
or jsut do what you want. after all it is your game.

the question is, does the actions serve a purpose? and i dont talk in the hands on sense but do they keep the balance of good and evil in check? one can argue morality to the 9th hell and still not be finished so the whole thing boils down to, if they kill the junkies, maybe the junkies are better of dead? the guards, well, they may be walking tru life just to get theyre next paycheck and go to sleep. the point is that in a cyberpunk world life is cheap. so if the actions however amoral or evil they may be up front makes the world a better place overall then they deserve karma. if you could define karma then it would not be karma, karma are the littile things in life.

its allso in the game context a cross of takeing your life in your own hands, experience and dumb luck. surviving another day on the job deserves a karma point, just one tho. get the job done, thats another point. killing someone in cold blod, thats not a point but its not removal of all points either (thats the D&D way of doing stuff).

a street punk may have a shitload of karma just by the basic fact that he have survived on the street, picking up pointer here and there and developed a kind of sixed sense and a body that can survive on what a corp wageslave will call spoiled food.

karma is many things to many people, and that what makes this game great. its not kill this monster, avoid this trap, rescue this priness and you get that amount of exp. its about survival in a world that no longer care about anything but basic survival, you have dragons and other monsters that will eat you on sight, walk tru the wrong area of town at the wrong time and someone will cut you open just for the clothes on your back and your wallet.

karma basicly means that your somebody, not just anybody. the stars have you in theyre favor, your totem likes you, but its up to you what you do with this favor. a hand of god may pull your ass out of a oops but you cant keep counting on it to save your ass all the time, thats pushing your luck. any karma you have gotten you can keep but burn it and you risk not getting more unless your smart. there is no need to take away what someone have allready got, just stay away from giving more

some junkies or guards have nothing to say in the cosmic whole, if you want to tell them its bad then drop the lone star on them. but if they survive to the next day and gets the job done then hand out a point or 2...

I've personally always differentiated between the karma that is awarded as 'experience' and the whole morality gig. For me, in Shadowrun, morality is relative, a function of the whole socio-environmental matrix malarky. Only through application does it become 'filtered' through perception. <sigh>

Hmmn... I guess I'm overtly influenced by Earthdawn give the whole - and 'done to death' - writing of a cross-over campaign with Shadowrun...

Kage

Karma was a chameleon who would come and go.

i don't see karma as based on good and evil, 'cause in reality terms like good and evil are entirely realative terms. what one person would percieve as good, another might percieve as evil.
so defining good and evil in the world of SR is IMHO dumb.

i award karma to players for their individuel performance and good roleplaying. after all, playing an RPG is all about having fun, so i reward my players for helping each other towards this goal.
and i occasionally award 'heroic' acts with kara as well, but not as much in the sense of right and wrong as in the display of skill and ability.
and also, saving the life of a team mate saves the player from the dissapointment of having to make a new character, and as such he is helpng the players enjoying themselves.

i don't know if any of you people feel the same way as me about this, but i do believe that the SR3 book hints towards rewarding the players for having fun.

Really, Karma should handled neutrally, without good/bad axis.

For those "killall" players (having one) - I gave him flaw cruelty and it will be increased from time to time, if he will continue this path. In my interpretation it forces him to make willsave when doing something that involves blood - he wants to see more and more blood and suffering.

Shadowrunners should be professionals, not amateurs who work as bloody as they can. One day that "killall" will fail his willsave in situation where he must retreat and get himself killed.

So, everything has cause and result.
That is my firm belief.
If you do stupid things, they get back to you.

I'd say that Karma should be experience exclusively, but I know I'd add Karma to players that go out our their way to really change the world for the better. So I guess I have to come up with an explanation for this inconsistency;

Being an immoral person is "easy" and not always as testing as walking the thin line. A PC can always kill a person and take his stuff, but could as well help the person, build up a mutual trust and finally be able to buy or even loan the stuff in question from this person. By taking this reroute around the immoral decision, the character learned more than he would by drawing a gun and pulling the trigger although, he probably made a loss in material gains.

I often put this Karma<->Loot/Money polarization in adventures. But I don't really see punishing a PC Karma-wise for taking immoral or ruthless actions.

Well, I missed the bit about no more Threat Ratings, that helps a lot in terms of figuring this thing out. When the game system itself discriminated between the sorts of "experience" assigned to maybe-good and maybe-bad people, it wasn't such a clear cut issue.

And I want to clarify that I'm not at all interested in forcing my players to be do-gooders or whatever - "good" and "evil" both may have their own rewards, and if "evil" wins out in the end, it's not much different from the rest of the campaign world. In fact, I'm not really interested in changing anything - the discussion just raised some question as to the nature of Karma, and I was curious.

Seems like most of you just treat it as XP. I actually give Karma as a reward for certain out-of-game actions as well (bringing a journal or creating some artwork or whatever, things that improve the immersion of the game for the players) so it's pretty much a metagame reward for my players anyway...

This academic information possibly has no relevance at all to the debate.... but....

The word karma is Sanskrit for "action". In Buddhist studies, it is the teaching that explains the workings of cause-and-effect -- both at the obvious level, and at the more subtle psychological and social levels. It is not a cosmic reward and punishment system. It is a cosmic action-reaction system -- Newtonian thought applied to the realm of the mind, society, and spirit.

For example, killing is considered bad because it cultivates in a person a feeling of cheapness for life (which is depressing) and because it often creates anger and more negative emotions in the survivors/witnesses/participants. It's not a point-tracking system, though, so if your actions lead to death somewhere, but you felt a deep sense of the value of the life you took, and there is no one involved who would have negative emotions about the event, it's not bad.

As it applies to gaming..... I interpret this in game so as to call karma "inspiration". If a person feels they are involved in great things, doing great things, and having personal growth and change, then they have generated the energy and momentum in their life to learn new skills, connect with the universe more deeply, etc. (ie. spend their karma). Depending on your psychology and the situation, you could be inspired by totally different things than your neighbor.

--K

I dunno, K. I think I'll stick with the Sanskrit interpretation, myself. By acting in such a way as to influence the universe, you gain the ability to possibly influence it a bit more. One action leading to another, and so on.

But to answer Req's question-- Karma does not need to be a "cosmic brownie points system", nor was it meant to be, precicely. Think of it instead as a measure of how much activity you have caused in the world, and your ability to cause actions to happen. It's a measure of your influence, not your direction. It's possible for someone to have been very "evil" and still have "earned much karma".

The notion that karma is anything other than what SR uses for xp and has in fact some cosmic signifigance is defeated with the simple realization that bad guys spend karma on their stuff too, where'd they get it?

Sunday.

I wonder, then, why FASA (back in the day) called it Karma instead of XP like just about everyone else. And I wonder whether it was tied in to the more "good-guy" image that I tend to remember from early Shadowrun - you know, fighting the evil corporations, standing up for the rights of the oppressed, saving the world from the Toxics and bugs, and making a quick buck along the way... I can't help but wonder if it originally had other connotations. Then again, I may just be talking out my ass here. Wouldn't be the first time.

Now, Sunday, you're talking like it was always this way...it wasn't. As I've mentioned, baddies didn't used to have Karma Pools, but Threat Ratings instead - implying that if they didn't get pools, they hadn't earned Karma, and this was a way to equalize them with the PCs. If they've changed that in 3rd, well, that's super, but that wasn't where the debate was coming from.

Eh, for the same reason DnD actively portrayed the heroes as, well, heroes and not villains.

They don't want to risk offending parents who might be paying the cash for the products.

With that in mind, the game was cultivated with a specific role for the players to explore as opposed to a more open-ended universe where the GM crafts a story in his or her own fashion.

As for not calling it "exp", I would imagine they were trying to be a little different than other game systems that did call it exp.

-Siege

Adventure modules grant bonus Karma for good deeds.

It wasn't until Cyberpunk folded and all its fans started playing SR that Karma became only XP.

I give bonus Karma for good deeds, and subtract from the Karma payout for bad deeds to encourage morality.