Ok, here's the questions:

A) Is it possible for a character to lose rating levels in attributes or skills by not keeping up in practice/exercise/etc?

B) How would one go about executing such an effect in-game?

I'm asking because one of my players has his character do the "daily dozen" as his morning routine to stay fit and limber; if he weren't to do such a thing, or if a character with a pistols skill didn't practice, would they eventually have their rating in body or pistols (respectively) reduced?

And how would one treat this as an in-game effect? If a player doesn't explicitly say that he's practicing/exercising/etc, is it taken as a given that they are or that they aren't? And after how long of a lag time should the rating be reduced?

a) Technically by RAW, no.

b) If you want to enforce it that way, decrease the value, refund the Karma.

Thus, if he slacks, he'll eventually drop a level - and can get it back no problem if he get's back on track... or focus on something different.

b) I would only try to enforce something like this if the player tried to use up all their "free time" with other things, i.e. working a regular job.

My thinking is, there are 168 hours in a week, with 56 of those (on average) asleep. So, that is 112 hours that a player has with their runner awake. Most of the runs I have done are typically short, i.e. 4-6 hours legwork/meeting and 4-6 hours on the actual run. And those are typically just for a week.

So, that is 100 hours per week, that a character has to do "other" stuff. I am not into micromanaging, so I don't need them to tell me the details of that. Their lifestyle costs cover food, recreation and any basic upkeep to their character. I also allow them to train up to Logic skills simultaneously per week.

As long as my players aren't trying to work a second job or set up a secondary income, I don't need (or want) to know the "fluff" of what they are doing with the rest of their time. I assume they are heading to shooting ranges, messing with commlinks, practicing low force spells and anything else that would keep their attributes and skills at their listed ratings...

Or here's another common case, the player who buys skills and never uses them again.

RAW: Rules As Written

That's pretty much the intention.

It should be a slow and thus rare thing to do, though.

As there are now training times, one could take those as a guideline.

-physical attributes could decrease quickly within a month or two depending on what the hell the person is doing like drinking alcohol and stuffing his face.

-skills would degrade alot slower because those are burned into your brain and although you can get rusty it doesnt take much to get back into tip top shape. Those would degrade like maybe in 6 months of non usage and only by a point.

I would be pissed at a GM for going this route though. I mean jesus christ do you want a schedule of what i eat and when i take a dump to so you can figure out some retarded little thing your going to spring on my character??

*hand waivey* my guy does crap to stay in shape and keep his skills up without having to roleplay the crap.

At worse case scenario you should just mention to your player(s) that it would be cool if they included excersizes or skill practice occasionally here or there and didnt always spend all there downtime in the strip joints.

The only thing this would be useful for and not piss me off as a player is if my character gets seriously injured or I get cyber/bio installed..

Yeah, this really comes down to GM style and what the players want...

I mean, just because one of my players may like this, that doesn't mean I am going to start keeping track of the skills and attributes everyone uses each session and refund karma...WAY too much micromanagement, IMO.

But, if the GM enjoys doing that and the players want it, go for it...I think a slow refund of karma that they could reallocate would be good, although, to house-rule a way to re-train skills and attributes, and allow players to do it ad hoc if they choose, would probably be better. I mean, I am sure that not every player is going to care to make these changes.

Maybe allowing a retraining or used karma (which still will cost time and nuyen) is all that is needed?

I'd definitely only suggest it as an option for players. They don't have to do it if they don't want to.

I can definitely see players abusing this, if they're not regulated by the GM. Thus, GM confirmation (probably with a good explanation as to why the character lost a point of hacking and gained a point of pistols) would be a very good idea.

When I first started GMing SR I used to enforce an skill/atrophy rule if you didn't put in upkeep time. I still occasionally think about it.

But having done it, it wasn't worth it. It's annoying and add a layer of mechanics for nothing. Realistically, it makes sense, and it wouldn't be hard to come up with one system or another, but I wouldn't. It doesn't bring anything to the game.

One way to do it is to make the skill training times halved if half the points are taken from elsewhere and turned into a new unit called something like "Respent Character Points." That way players are rewarded time-wise for learning stuff at the expense of their existing skills.