I tried to see if this had been covered somewhere but searching did not work for me. My apologies if I am rehashing something already answered elsewhere.

I am starting up a campaign in which I am interested in letting the players purchase Karma and possibly letting them sell Karma. There is information in the SR3 Companion about this, and if memory serves it suggests purchasing karma for 5,000 nuyen, and selling it for 250-1,000 nuyen per point. I am planning to run the campaign with pretty standard karma awards, so my question is as follows:

Those of you who allow purchase and/or selling of Karma, what rate do you allow it at? 250-1000 seems WAY low for selling, I was thinking in the range of purchase for 10,000 and selling for 5,000.

Those of you who do not allow one or both of these, any particularly compelling reasons as to why, that you would care to share?

My goal is to come up with a fair, balance and economical set of numbers for this.

Personally, out group can only purchase karma from each other. That way we get to determine the value of our own Karma. I've found that a point of karma sells, on average, for about 20,000 when left to the players to handle. And no, I don't care how out-of-character that may seem.

Sphynx

I'd love some info on it. My crew is in the 25-karma range and already the sammies are bitching about having nothing to spend their karma on (umm, buy athletics you fool) and the mages are bitching about not having enough.

I'd love to let them buy and sell.

I use a polynomial formula in character creation and advancement, based (sort-of) off BeCKS.

You can spend K Karma to acquire (K x K) x 100 Nuyen at any time. So the more you save up, the more it's worth.

Likewise, you can purchase Karma once per session; K Karma costs (K x K) x 100 Nuyen. So the more Karma you want to buy, the more expensive it's going to be.

Keeps things fair both ways.

I've heard two reasons why characters shouldn't buy karma:

1) It can be unbalancing. If a new character wins it big and 'buys' himself to be equivalent of a very old, experienced character, that's very bad. I believe the karma rules had a limit on how much karma you can buy each time (if not, they should).

2) It really doesn't make much sense. You can 'buy' experience? Well, maybe, if you spent the time and maybe put the money down for training or something. You can 'sell' experience? That's kinda wacky unless you have a free spirit out there. The first one you can justify, the second one you really can't (maybe you lose karma by mugging old ladies?).

If you are going to go into karma bartering, I'd say make sure there's a cap on it (limiting it to the amount of your karma pool sounds a bit harsh, I limit it to half of the amount of karma you made on the last run.) Also, I'd tend to make the costs unequal, to discourage players from doing it too much (buy high, sell low). Set the price for buying karma at 20k, sell it at 5k. Sphynx's idea doesn't make much sense from a roleplaying viewpoint, but in regards to making sure karma keeps its value, I think it's great. I might just try that next time.

No, I am a math shaman.. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA All will bow before my greatness..... MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

Oh for a real post...

I consider buying Karma to be training and such in your spare time to get better, training costs money. So I say, you want 2 Karma towards your Athletics skill, cool, thats 20k nuyen, and you have to spend the next week working out at the gym, doing gymnastics and climbing excercises.. At the end of that period, he gets his 2 karma to spend. Or maybe one does a run in his off hours for a charity group, spends 20k on gear or bribes that gets used up and gets his 2 karma that way. Runners dont always have to be running together, so give them a run in thier downtime if nessassary

Similarly, selling karma is just like burning it in my mind.. You do it to get some devine favor... You just managed to buy this weeks winning lotto ticket, or perhaps you manage to negotiate better against this weeks Mr. Johnson. Perhaps they were even asked to do a favor for a friend and got great pay from it. Generally giving them the bonus a week or so after they pay the price for it.

It's 2000 nuyen to buy one karma and you can sell karma for (1D6 * 250) nuyen for each point IMG.

Heh. On the other hand, biology provides wonderful ideas for new bioware.

You're telling me. Bring on the viral weapons!

Indeed. All of my characters, no matter what they've been, have always been karma sinks. Mages and Otaku are just more so.

~J

I always had this very interesting idea I wanted to try called the Big Pot of Reward. At the end of the run, the players would be awarded a cash sum and a pool of karma to dive amongst themselves. It's up to the players to see who gets what. It either has the potential to really bring the group together or really putting them at each other's throats.

Buying karma is one of the most retarded concepts in the Shadowrun world. Karma is a completely abstract concept, the idea of being able to quantify it seems a little strange. Now I know that it's written off in the book as buying lucky charms, or whatever, but still at the end of the day you're going to have players running around buying lucky charms in an entirely mathmatical manner.

It sort of ends up killing most of the roleplaying that the game presents.

Buying better training, as Phelious Fogg said, seems much more workable. Still, to be able to quantify that is a little strange. There's already rules for trainers reducing the amount of time required to increase a skill or attribute. I guess you could say that a character can reduce the karma cost also, but then you fall into the trap of the cost of a trainer. I know a lot of people charge a new house for training, yet don't give the same quality as someone who may do so for free. Hell, most of the acrobatics/gymnastics I learnt was at $12 for around two hours, which ended up being three hours, as opposed to $500 or so for something which went for about a year and taught diddly squat.

Karma isn't going to translate to book keeping. If it does, then you've probably stopped roleplaying, and you're now rollplaying.

Selling karma is silly. As an abstract concept you'd never know how much you have to spend in the first place. "I feel lucky, I'm going gambling," isn't a great excuse when the character only goes out and gambles when they're pumped full of karma. Characters will end up doing things out of character to get the cash, and things that just don't make much sense.

Karma's karma, money's money. Leave it at that.

that's certainly one opinion, but that doesn't change the fact that it works quite well in some games, without reducing anyone to "rollplaying".

Purcahsing karma is very necessary in games which use training times. The mage can burn through 100 karma in initiation and spell learning before the street sam breaks 15 learning skills and increasing attributes (at base times, the ratio is probably a little closer in practice).

At the same time, the samurai can burn through a million nuyen much, much faster than a mage (take a look at surgery costs alone).

If your game doesn't bother with training times, don't use the karma purchasing rules. Being able to buy karma is no more retarded than the concept that getting better at shooting a pistol requires you to be a good roleplayer. It's all arbitrary game mechanics, after all and serves to balance the game between the mundane and the awakened.

As for selling karma... Free Spirit + Wealth = IC way to do it easily.

That's not what he said Nevermind. It balances the game between mundane and awakened in that the mundane have something nice to spend their karma on. Cash. Those cyber/bio enhancements take alot of nuyen. However, at 5k a slot, that's admittedly not a balancing factor at all, considering the costs. To balance, raise the value of karma, if mages have it FAR too easy, than sell/buy karma at 100,000 nuyen a piece. (that's hopefully an exageration) Then for every 5 karma a mage earns, a sammie gets 500,000 Personally, since I see mages maxxing out at about 200 karma, if sold for 25,000 a piece, a sammie could have saved up 5,000,000 plus whatever cash he earned on an individual scale. So, when a mage maxxes out, a sammie should be maxxed out with nice beta grades all around as well as all sorts of great gadgets to make him better.

The GM has a tool to balance now, so the sammies can advance just as nicely as the mages. It's not about the mage buying karma (at 20k a piece, I'd end up averaging an additional 1 karma every 4 sessions in our games), it's about giving the Sammie a chance to sell karma for much needed cash.

Sphynx

If a character is going to train himself/herself, I'm of the opinion that it should be something the player discusses with the GM. The character is going to take off one or two months for some brutal training to up his or her Athletics skill, or is signing up with a merc squad for some intensive combat training to increase their Heavy Weapons skill. And the GM should offer them straight skill points for whatever seems reasonable. If they're skill 6 going on 7, maybe it takes them three months. Skill level 8 going on 9 might take four months of dedicated training. During that time the player has to sub in a temp character to use while their normal one is out training.

Otherwise, it should be something that the player earns through their gameplay and roleplaying abilities. A cybersam may complain, but they can always spend their karma on improving their skills they can't argue that.

Karma is essentially part of your soul, a piece of your being. You give it up to a Free spirit in exchange for various services like quick Regeneration. You might even generously donate one to a fellow character or use several to quicken a spell to a target. Each of these require an investment of time and attention on the part of the giver and the reciever. There's no karma bank that you can stroll into down the block with shifting exchange prices.

A player may be willing to sell karma to another player, but the price would be totally up to them. They get to answer the real question: How much is your karma worth to you? If somebody's willing to sell a piece of their experience/soul for two creds, well more power to them. They're either the Bringer of Gifts or the biggest sucker in the world.

Hmm... a free spirit with the Wealth power may give precious stones in exchange for karma. “Greedy humans will give anything for worldly possessions. Ahaha, pathetics wretches!”

Sorry Sphynx, i have to disagree, but if I read the postings above, most of the time the post people talk about purchasing karma, not selling it for cash. So my impression is, that the mayority of the people favoring this concept are mage players.

From my point of view its only pushing the power of mages, and this is not necessary from my XP.

But if i had to fix values for karma i would sell it for 50k+ to the players and won't give more than 25k for 1 Point.

@Artemis: If Training to rise skills should take month of training, don't you thing that learing times for spells are .... a little short?

I agree with you Nevermind. If I'd ever been given a chance to buy karma at 5k a shot, I'd be the most skilled mage around. 20 and 50 K is alot better IMHO.

As for Artemis....

I completely disagree with the optional Skill Training rules. You get better by using your skill in the field, that's what karma is, not some holy weight on your soul or other kharmic/soul nonsense. You either do skill-training OR spend karma IMHO. It just makes no sense....

"Oh teacher I just don't get it... I've spent years in your class and not learned a damn thing... hold on, gotta do a Run, been out of work for years.... ok, I'm back, Ah, I understand it now, of course."

Maybe that's why I'm having a harder time learning Dutch than these other people in my classes.... I just don't have the karma to spend.

Sphynx

Don't get me wrong, I think that karma spending is the best way to raise skills. I think it shows that during the past few runs on which you've gained karma, the things you improve through it are aspects of yourself that have grown through the raw experience and growth of mind and body.

As for it taking months in the above idea, that was indicating somebody trying to raise a skill of 6 or higher. And 6 is supposedly reflecting someone quite skilled in that particular field, whatever it may be. It could take months cause you never know when that kind of opportunity for training will come along, and instances like the merc training probably gives you the experience but leaves you in hospital recovery for the better part of the time.

Fortunately for us magicians, learning a spell isn't quite so dangerous or rigorous as weapons training in the field. And OurTeam is right, sometimes it can take a magician :cough: such as myself... months to learn even a simple Force 6 or Force 8 spell, simply because of poor luck. Maybe it's bad fungshway...

It showed up somewhere else, as well; either MitS or SOTA:2063.

Love that picture.

~J

Yeah, I don't get the whole idea of sammies not having anything to spend Karma on. My most experienced character is a sammie, and I can spend lots more Karma than the 240 I've spent so far. Yes, I reached a point of diminishing returns as far as getting better at killing things (12 dice for the primary combat skill, 6-9 dice in 5 secondary combat skills), but there's a lot of other things to be done in the game than just kill stuff. I jacked up his Athletics, Electronics, Biotech, Computer, Car, and Negotiation skills. I raised most of his attributes to 6. I bought him up to fluency in 4 extra languages (plus learned to read and write them), and bought 8 new Knowledge skills that he didn't have at character creation. There's still a lot more I could spend Karma on. He doesn't know how to fly a helicopter, or repair a car, or make bombs, or use a missile launcher, or fire a vehicle mounted weapon. He "only" has 7 dice for Stealth tests. He's got one nagging flaw that I'd love to buy off with Karma. I really just can't understand how a sammie could ever have more Karma than he can use. With 240 invested, I could _easily_ spend another 240 Karma on this character (if nothing else, putting Bod and Wil to 9 would eat up 144 Karma by themselves).

Ok, my 2 here-

I allow the "purchase" of karma - 1Karma = 2500. BUT...

-Can only be used for the "betterment" of the character, usually in the form of lengthy, intensive training, study, etc. Can also apply for the learning and development of spells (all training and spell-creation rules canon.) and slow, gradual betterment of base stats.

The purchase of karma for the "pool" seems...well, silly.

My motley crew have a once-only kama pool, and believe me, we all save those precious "Re-roll and save my ass" points when something goes very, very wrong.

But that's the way we play, sort of "Ok, I did some good things once, and it might be an idea to see if someone actually apprecieated it...Wait, the guard passed? Not seeing us? Ok, let's not do that again, someone snipe the bastards from a distance, right?"


PS: The purchase of karma is probabily a left-over of my DnD days, where being a monty-hauler was commonplace, but so was having the riches slip away with not much sticking to the greedy fingers of the chrs...

In this way, a player can blow millions if they want, then suddenly die of an unforseen complication, like the uber-Sam dying from rat bite after he found that he couldn't afford a decent street doc that had a decent quality of black-market antibiotics.


L- bastard DM, tm.

ialdabaoth: I love that idea!

I don't allow people to purchase karma, but I do allow karma discounts for cash. The effects on the karma pool alone complicate things unduly.

However, purchasing a discount works very well. Karma comes from a word meaning "effort"; and cash can make many kinds of work easier. By spending cash, you can hire the best trainers, get the best equipment, and patch yourself up after some really rough training.

For example, let's say that Sally Sammie wants to improve her unarmed combat skill. She could just pay the normal training fees, and get a few private lessons with a dojo instructor. But if she spends more cash, slowly working through a network of contacts until she finds a wizened troll adept who's a quiet legend on the streets, and buys him several expensive artifacts to get his attention; then goes through several weeks of truly brutal training, paying a street doc and mage to heal her up after every session.... I'd say that's worth a discount in karma.

Similarily, if a mage tracks down and buys a rare tome of esoteric magic, that may be worth a karma discount on learning a spell. There's lots of possibilites in this concept; it's up to your imagination.

I don't really like the concept of buying and selling karma, but allow it in the game anyway, because I've never found it unbalancing. But because I think its a bit powerful as it stands in the books, and thats only a reccomendation anyway, I've set it at 1 point of karma= 10% of your current cash to a maximum of 5 karma per month of game time, AND you have to come up with a convincing way of earning it in the first place. Eg, the combat medics in the team often buy a load of supplies (which can get very expensive) for a local free hospital then spend a few days doing volunteer work as well. The street sams have a harder time justifying it, so don't buy karma very often (not, as has been stated previously, that they need to since cash gets them the toys they want). Mages, when they have spare cash after all the expendable category foci and sustaining foci can't buy silly amounts of karma with the leftovers because there's a max of five (or 50% of your earnings) built in.

It means that the level of 'hurt' a character suffers to earn that karma remains relatively the same. I also don't allow them to add it to their total karma earned and therefore affect their karma pool. It means more book keeping for the players, but if they want the benefits they have to pay the price! (incidentally, we also allow every race to earn KP at 1 per 10 GK up to KP5, then its 1 per 20 to KP 10, then its 1 per 30 etc etc. Keeps the karma pools much more manageable and increases the life span of the character in terms of when they really should retire due to stupid karma pool levels!)

One thing that's never come up is burning karma for cash, since the players tend to have enough cash after medical bills to get by till their next job or buy a new toy now and then. If it does come up, I'll probably be quite generous and say 5000Y for 1 karma point, max of 50% of your karma spent per month. Unless they have lots to burn they're never going to get that much but it might get them enough to make it through a tough period. It would again have to be justified by the player, and they may well gamble, or take on some bouncer duty at the local nightclub, or whatever.

The decision whether to allow it or not is up to the Gm. Its an optional rule after all, and if you don't like it, don't use it. I dont really like the concept, but its not unbalancing and is useful for the players so I allow it.

I personally think Sammies are more than the killing machines most people create them to be. You can easily make them the jack-of-all-trades when it comes to mundane tasks. Throw some Electronics in, some Computer, some B/R tasks, some social skills that aren't Intimidation, just a lot of stuff to make them just as useful than the Level 8 Initiate you have running around with you.

Plus, unless it's changed big time, you don't regain Essence when you get something upped in terms of grade. I'm not sure on Bio Index, though. With the cyberware, I believe you just have a hole where that 'ware used to be, meaning free Essence just for that spot.

As always, correct me if I'm wrong.

If you choose the relevant surgery options when having cyber removed and new stuff put in, and get I think at least four successes on the surgery test, you can reuse the essence already spent. But otherwise I get the distinct impression you just lose it.

hth

I realise I'm likely talking to a dead thread here, but in case anyone checks back later... I was reading the matrix book and thought of a few ways that deckers could trade in karma for that little bit of spare cash if they wanted to. You never know, it might help if you're having difficulties dealing with deckers as I know people often do. I'll probably put it in one of the matrix threads too. How much cash they get is obviously up to the GM as suits their campaign, if they allow cash<>karma in the first place!

1. Rich Folks Privacy

In Matrix, where it talks about the information age and just what data is out there on individuals it states that rich folks often employ individuals and organisations to remove their names from mailing lists, sales databases, and other such distasteful places. Mostly they probably use legit agencys which specialise in this sort of thing. But certain people may want data removal from more seedy, yet no more protected, hosts. This is where places like shadowland (more specifically Hacker Heaven) come in, and almost certainly offer these kinds of services. It could easily be part of your contact upkeep to staff these services for short periods, and a decker could make use of this, upkeeping contacts, and spending karma, in return for which their contact stays friendly and they do such a good job they give the decker a bonus. If the decker wants to chance it, they could take this route with one of the aforementioned legit agencies as well.

2. A free illegal matrix hookup project in the barrens or other deprived area. The infrastructure is probably already there in a lot of places (so obviously pick one of those places!), they just need the external hardware and the connection reactivating. Well, leave the hardware up to those that live on the streets, or scrounge some up in an armed robbery from somewhere, whatever. (Maybe you can sort the local gang out with a high speed access and 24 hour porn in return for a load of gear which fell of the back of a t-bird to dish out to people!). The decker can make a few passes as per the rules in Matrix to activate accounts for whatever period of time, spending karma as they do it. The character still therefore has to roleplay meeting these people or at least get people on board somehow, and generally has to work a bit for the cash, which at least makes them feel they've made an effort. The actual connection can be done with one average test. The cash they get back represents the total cash drummed up by all the people who take part in gratitude, so it will not be very profitable (because otherwise he may as well just charge for the service in the first place), but it will generate him lasting benefits in other ways, which seems quite karmic to me! The decker now has a couple of square blocks worth of people otherwise unconnected to him that he can go hide out at (once) if things get sticky and so on.

3. SIN building/maintenance/deletion/subversion. Take your pick. The decker can go join one of the agencies/organisations mentioned above, or a syndicate, and do a stint on one of their ongoing SIN operations. Obviously entering a syndicate is not something to be taken lightly, but that's up to the player, right? Karma spent while doing that for free, as in the first suggestion, can result in a bonus or gear, or whatever.

Basically, just treat the karma for cash like mini-runs with some minor tweaking in that the idea is the the decker is largely doing it for free, and gets a cash bonus from other things. Its trite, but it makes the player feel like they've actually accomplished something and made some effort rather than just lottery tickets.

However, a similar idea to lottery tickets, but not as obvious, is stock market trading. The GM can have fun with this one. The decker first must have some cash to invest (unless its part of their lifestyle portfolio or something that they already have x shares in this that and the other), and declares how much attention he's investing in the markets this week/month/whatever (i.e. how much karma is he spending), and then the GM can decide, influenced by the team's recent actions if appropriate, exactly how much that translates into. If they have any kind of relevant skill which might help, I'd let them roll that too, and use the successes as a guide as to how generous to be. Since they're spending karma, I would always let them come out with profit, but if things at Ares are really bad this month because of something the team did and the decker doesn't realise that they own the company he's invested in, then the profit margin would be smaller.

Anyway, just some ideas. Enjoy!