In the older versions there were rules for this...
So how much would karma be worth?
1BP = 5000
1BP = 1~2 Karma
So for 1 karma, you can get 2500 .
And for 5000 , you can get 1 karma.
How does that sound?

If you ask me i wouldnt allow it. But, depending on how often you play shadowrun this could be helpfull to ensure charakter development. Say you play only 2 times a month, earn good money ingame but are realtive low on earning karma points, the karma for money rule would make some sense to keep the shadowrun flow alive. Anyways, the best solution IS to play as much as possible and earn that way more karma and money.

How are you GETTING money for karma?

What? Find a local pawnshop that trades in good luck?

Okay...
We do want to allow it to give our adept something to do with his money, so...

If you want some rules and ingame fluff, read the SR3 Companion p. 79-80...

If I can find a copy... My collection of books is very hit and miss.

Mostly miss.

That OTHER Game We Do Not Talk About, in the first edition, had XP = gold. This was one of the first things to go.

What does this tell us?

Well, basically the rationale is that if you spend karma to get cash, you win some money in the lottery, find a certified credstick or some such lucky monetary windfall and if you spend cash for karma, you give it to charity or something and get a fuzzy feeling and karma...


People have a hard time not going off on tangents?

Karma for cash we always looked as as stuff like a minor lotto winning, or finding some cash, just a random turn of good luck, although people opting to do it was pretty rare.

We did the Cash for Karma for a while, especially as we tended to have more magical characters, very little cyber, and a lot of self-telesma gathering. Most of the team didn't have a lot of need for cash beyond life style and toys, and more were interested in upping their characters.
We found that , first of all, the cash requirement was too low. We changed it to 10,000/per karma, then upped it to 25K when the team started doing higher paid runs. The best thing I found though was limiting the amount they could buy to half of what they made (karma wise) off of the run.

I also made them justify the cash expediture, such as dumping a ton of cash on magical texts for mages, or giving to some charity, getting the top end in supplies, that sort of thing.

As was said above, you could spend time (Karma) doing outside work for cash. Or you could win a lottery. Or ...

This is also a good idea, limiting it to half earned karma, we were thinking of a max of 3 bought everytime we earned karma, but were worried it would provoke the attitude that one had to buy those 3 karma no matter what, a cap based on total karma earned would make him able to exchange at his own pace, as it were...

When you upped it to 10K per karma, what were you earning per run? And when you changed it to 25K?

OK, that all makes sense.

I was only picturing some sleazy, but powerful, Free Spirit standing on the corner somewhere in a trenchcoat offering Credsitcks for Karma...

...

Might use that.

I prefer CanRay's idea for a karma for cash deal

"Come on man... just let me get a little of what... makes you... you! It's easy! Easiest nuyen you'll ever score..."

Of course, it's a spirit of man.

Just hope it's not a Toxic Spirit of Man that's been twisted by the negative emotions of drug dealers and their victims.

My group came up with a wacky system for karma for cash involving a deck of cards and the option to spend either two points of karma or four.
With expenditure of two points we drew one card from the deck. With expenditure of four points we drew one card, got the results and then drew a second card.

2 point deck:
Hearts: 1d6 x500 nY
Clubs: 1d6 x1000 nY
Diamonds: 1d6 x1500 nY
Spades: 1d6 x2000 nY
Joker: 1d6 x1 nY

4 point deck:
as above, second draw gives the additional modifier of:
Hearts x1
Clubs x2
Diamonds x3
Spades x4
Jack of Clubs x5
King of Spades x6
Queen of Hearts x10
Queen of Diamonds x0 (yep nothing, the game master blames the Eagles)

What he forgot to mention was for every point of notoriety we had he slipped another Joker and Queen of Diamonds into the deck. The potential for a year's high lifestyle was tempting for most of us. Sometimes you don't hit the jackpot. Those are the breaks when you deal with the devil.
*edit* I should also mention he only did this a couple times a year, so it wasn't anytime we happened to feel like scrounging some extra cash. */edit*

I should also mention that he didn't completely screw us over if we drew the QoD. He kept notes and often placed useful items in convenient locations. I think my favorite conveniently located set of items was four Mitsuhama Blazes with the keys still in them after our Bulldog had been blown to hell. "Karma smiles upon you, four bikes with the keys in them, how convenient..."

1 karma <=> 2500 yens seems reasonable. Just be careful, a high lifestyle over a medium lifestyle is therefore worth 2 karma a month, or a specalisation, and that lifestyle better have real benifts attached to be worth 2 karma.

I'd suggest forcing people up to a high lifestyle then letting them spend extra.

I like symmetry and always felt, back in SR3, that it should be equalt trading either way, so I did the 1 karma=5000nuyen/5000nuyen=1karma thing. I capped it out at 5 spent/gained karma per session.

In SR 4, though, the karma for cash thing is less nessesary, as a lot of stuff prices got lowered. Still, if a GM allowed it I'd use it.

Funny we were just talking about this at game last weekend. When you only play every other week its hard to lvl/advance a character. Sammies really reach a point were cash is much more important then karma and the reverse is true for technomancers and magical types. I was was'nt so sure about adding a system like this, but with time constraints on game time it just makes sense if you want to see any kind of meaningful advancement.

We didn't start doing cash for Karma until we already had an experienced team. These were guys who started out pretty bottom of the barrel, and did a lot of runs to work their way up. The street sam was actually living in the Face's closet at one point, so they weren't even considering dropping any extra cash they had. After they were able to afford it, we started doing the 5K, and upped the cost to 10K when they started getting runs pushing 40K.

We went up to 25K when they were doing runs like destroying entire research facilities, or the jobs in Corporate Punishment, such as stealing the scrolls from the DIMR and securing the Delta clinic for one of the Fuchi factions. They were pulling in jobs of 100K+ at that point, so 10Kfor karma made no sense. The issue we were looking at was being able to make more, even substantially more in a couple of cases, off the cash, than the karma awarded for the run. When that came up was when we raised the cost. THankfully, everyone understood where I was coming from and agreed.

Here's the system we're using:

1. Anything that you can spend Karma on requires an extended "training" roll. For Attributes, this roll is Intuition + Willpower (1 day). For Skills, Specializations and Skill Groups, it's Intuition + Skill rating (1 day). For Spells, it's Intuition + Arcana (1 day), and so on. Each hit you achieve allows you to invest 1 Karma towards the process, and you gain the new rating when you've spent sufficient Karma. Someone with the Instruction skill can aid you, using the rules for teamwork.

2. Before you make your training roll, you may choose to invest Nuyen in increments of 5,000. Every 5,000 Nuyen allows you to double one Karma invested for 2 hits. Thus, if I'm trying to increase Agility, and I blow 15,000 on expensive training gear, tutorsofts, and what have you, when I roll Intuition + Willpower I may spend up to 6 hits to turn 3 Karma spent into 6 Karma invested. If I make 9 hits, the remaining 3 let me invest Karma at 1-for-1. If I only make 3 hits, I can invest 2 Karma to get 3, but the other 10,000 nuyen are wasted.

Does that make sense?

It does and I like.
Only question is does you system allow for cash>karma or things like initiation for mages, or making of ally spirits?
I could easily see how it could apply to learning spells, but mages would still need a way to pay for wards and all kinds of other fun things.

It counts for EVERYTHING. Paying for wards basically means you spend a bunch of money on some really expensive ward-channeling gear. Paying for your ally spirit basically means you throw a bunch of money into a super-expensive one-use-only Spirit Focus. ANYTHING you want to throw money at to reduce the Karma, you can come up with some in-game reason for what you're doing. And since the Karma never gets reduced below 2-for-1, and you're limited to (hits) Karma per day, it's not a horribly broken "I throw down a million Nuyen and buy these skills now" system.

I am a genuine fan of this idea. I'd applaud, but that doesn't work so well over the internet.

Glad you like. It works out pretty well for us - that, plus converting over from a BP system to a Karma-based chargen system.

How does the latter work?

Pretty simple. Everyone starts at '1' in all Attributes and '0' in everything else, and everything costs what it'd cost to up with Karma. You start with 750 Karma for a 400 BP build.

One thing I've found helps is to adjust the Karma costs a bit, though, as follows:

Attributes - x3 up to Racial Minimum, then x5 up to Racial Maximum.

Skill Groups - x5
Active Skills - x2
Knowledge Skills - x1
Specializations - 1 per +1 bonus (up to max bonus of Skill /2)
Spells - 5
Complex Forms - x1
Qualities (except for Magic) - BPx2
Race & Magic at chargen - BPx1
Cash - 1 per 5,000
Gear at chargen - 1 per 5,000 Nuyen worth up to Availability 12
Rare Gear (Abiliity 13+) at chargen - cost goes up 25% per +1 Availability, must have GM's permission

Note that these costs include the first dot, so buying a Skill Group from 0 to 1 costs 1x5.
These costs keep Attributes from being ridiculously under-costed and Skills from being absurdly over-costed. They also mean that races with high bonuses have to pay a little more for them, which balances out the somewhat odd racial costs.

In my group, we do 10K for 1 Karma. So far, this is working well, but they are making ~20K to split between the entire team for the current runs.

In my opinion, the Cash for Karma Rate varies according to the price of Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. on the NYSE multiplied by 10 or 20 according to the GM's mood.


There should also be a metaplane that greatly resembles the NYSE where spirits buy, sell, and trade karma as well as karma futures and the rights to mine specific people for karma. And it should have a Starbucks.

You mean there isn't?

Actually there is, and I was there last week. Seems hyzmarca's karma was going really cheeply... seems they're in for a run of bad luck. Just a word of advice, I heard you're in for an unexpected trip when you fall screaming from an open window.

Look i think you all are complicating too much, lets put some facts here okey?

First Karma = Exp

Concepts

Karma: Is the sum of actions you make, be it good or bad you will sooner or later pay for it.

Exp: as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill in or observation of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event.

Ok we got that, now how about the world of Shadowrun, a post modern hell where loyalty is close to non existence and capitalism has evolved into a perverted level were corporations rule your life directly or indirectly, where knowledge and experience is something valuable, and where you can obtain anything on the matrix, simple i follow this rule when a player wish to change karma to money:

First of all i follow this rule: 1 karma = 2500 - Notoriety + Street Cred * Net hits on negotiation. (Yes, i favor the characters that have the skill, if he hasnt negotiation he cant default with charisma. The negotiation test is cheked against a test that the game master makes witha dice pool equal to the Karma being exchanged, the player can use edge on this test.). Also a character can only convert your attribute Logic (Only Cyber and Bioware applays as a bonus you cant use magic for this test because the logic has to be permanent) as karma points to money per sesion, for example:

Carlos Plays Manuel a Street Ganger from "Los Encantos" Seattle city gang with street cred 3 and notoriety 1, and he has logic of 4(5) (Bio-implant that grants him a +1 modifier permanent or passive) in the las fight he ran out of bullets and he wish to buy more but he is broke, so carlos decided that Manuel needed some extra cash fast as he has not used 10 points of karma, and he hasnt transformed that sesion any karma to money he ask the master to exchange some karma for money, so he wish to exchange 5 karma points:

5 Karma = 12.500
Street Cred = 3
Notoriety = 1
Negotiation = 1
Charisma(average for me) = 2
Opposing Dice for the test = Karma Being Exchanged
Net Hits = 2 (Lucky son of a...)


So the maths go like this

12.500 - 1 + 3 * 2 = 25.004

Now these are the maths now how does the nuyen gets to him? easy the characters always have some skill that makes them special and they keep researching on the matrix because hell they wish no know how has evolved so they go to their regular page and they find an add requesting for help (acesoria, i cant remember how was in english) the shadowruner negotiates the price of the "technical help" he shares the knowledge and he gets paid via bank account. Easy and logical not some magic mumbo jumbo that can only be accesed by the awakened.

Now the other part Money to Karma, i handle this a bit... capitalism, first of my rules is that you dont get the karma to spend it on whatever you like no, you pay for a teacher my formula is like this:

Teacher Rating(The raiting must be equal or superior to the rating on the skill you wish to achieve) * Cost of the advancement in Karma * 10000

Now why so overpriced? because you will have to make a Logic + Teacher Hits or Rating to simplify 1 Day(Depending on the skill i encourage the game masters to modify the time as they see fit but 1 day is minimum) the treshold of this extended test is the cost in karma of the advancement you wish once you have it its yours. And thats how you trade Money for Karma.

Sorry for the crapy english but i cant do much about it. Hope i helped a bit.