In Shadowrun, Karma represents experience points, your skills learned from running the shadows.

So why the name Karma?

In the Real World, Karma represents your good deeds compared to bad deeds, and what you get reincarnated as.

IMO, another name would have suited it better.

Given the wide variety of stuff Karma is spent on, it's not necessarily a direct reflection of experience as much as it is a very abstract representation of "positive stuff that is due to you". Not a perfect reflection of the concept of karma, but it could be a lot worse.

Okay, I guess that's better.

The original creators of the game didn't want to be a D&D clone. So instead of "experience points" they chose the word "karma." Instead of "+1 weapons" they chose "weapon focus." The list goes on. But that's about as deep as it really gets as to why it's called Karma.

I love it when Dr. Funk is wrong just to be wrong.

Seriously, though: when Shadowrun was a young little RPG, the Karma system was fairly new. Not completely original, but as opposed to D&D, where you just heap you get XP for killing monsters and finding treasure and heap it up in big piles until you reach a magical level, you get a GM-determined number of points for whatever you do which you can spend on whatever abilities you want. In this, Shadowrun is very much like the original World of Darkness - except, of course, for the fact that Shadowrun also used Karma for certain magical operations; i.e. bribing free spirits, quickening spells, enchanting foci, etc. and could be burned on occasion for some positive effect. Some other uses and fluffy references were added (and subtracted, see Karma Pool) in later editions.

This dual-purpose is what makes Shadowrun magicians (and now technomancers) such Karma-hogs, but also represents one of the many fundamental differences between Shadowrun and so many other game systems.

Alright guys, thanks!

What's "Karma" called in the World of Darkness again? My memory isn't so good.

Afaik, Star Frontiers (back in '82) used a similar system already (and laters GURPS in '86). WoD was later ('91 or '92, iirc), even later than Shadowrun.

Karma is more a reflection of what you do "right" than what you do "good". Karma awards as I understand it, and after reading the Chatacter Improvment section of SR4, and the breakdown at the end of On the Run, it seems like Karma is awarded for doing what you're supposed to.

Although it seems like the IRL version of Karma in Shadowrun terms is the Street Cred/Notariety/Public Awareness system. If you do good deeds, and don't mess up runs, you get rewards in that respect. But it seems the SR4 Karma can be spent on other characters, so say one of them dies, some particularly benevolent GM may allow you to spend old Karma to improve new characters, so in the way that you can be "reincarnated" as something "better" than your old character...

I guess thats just how I rationalize it, I'm a newbie though...

The corebook equates Karma to experience:


SR4 p. 263

They also mention:


This suggests that karma does not only represent the merits of the character, but also the merits of the player himself.

In past versions of shadowrun Karma has been suggested to be more like actual Karma, in that you had more good karma for doing righteous things and worse for doing bad things. There used to be 'Bad Karma' and 'Cursed Karma'.

While good karma that a player/character earns at the end of a run is merely a reward for their participation in the run, the Karma Pool (3rd ed and prior) was representative of something more... like a character's fate. The more notable things they did, the more fate had in store for them.

This has been replaced by Edge, and by Notoriety/Reputation. With that move, it seems as though the moral emphasis is being moved away from Karma.


Maybe out of old school habit, I tend to leave some moral weight to player karma. I like the idea that characters who did the 'right' thing would get some kind of reward, even if no one knew about what they did. They guy who says no to wetwork, or who refuses to screw over his team for money, in my book, should get a karma reward. Players who attack or rip off other players get less. It is a kind of equalizer, and an imporant one in my games since so many of my players decide to be evil. There needs to be some in game motiviation for being good, and Karma fits the bill for me.

*sigh*

No, it doesn't.

"Karma" comes from a Sanskrit word meaning "action" or "performance". Technically speaking, there is no "good" or "bad" karma; there is only your deeds and their consequences. Karma doesn't mean "good deeds", it's more a measure of your effect on the universe. The more things you bring about through your actions, the greater your karmic destiny is.

That, and they can't spend billions on delta-grade bioware for their character improvement, and because immersion/initiation is so expensive.

Really though, from what I've heard, Karma in past editions actually had some resemblance to its real-world counterpart. In SR4 though, it's XP by any other name. Sure, they've gone for the Storyteller / GURPS etc style of XP (a handful of points per session, scaling costs on stats etc.), but it's still XP. And it's not like spending XP on spells and things has no precedent in other RPGs either.

So yeah. Karma = XP.

To expand a little bit on this :

On one side, you have systems like D&D, where XP are an abstract ressource for character improvement and advancement is codifed by strict levels and classes.
This, in theory, furthers the development of archetypal characters and provides efficient ways of balancing various options against each other, as it minimizes possible synergy effects by restricting options, as well as giving an accurate measure for the power of a given character.

On the other, there's systems with a focus on realism such as Runequest, where you have no XP, levels or classes, but rules for improving skills and attributes through downtime training and ingame achievements (like outstanding successes that can represent a breakthrough in your application of a certain skill).
The idea behind this being that the function of character development should be to mimic how learning works in the real world.
Balancing and having a quick reference for a character's power goes out the window, but is probably also much less of a concern.


SR, and WoD as well, take a middle ground, but are actually closer to the D&D approach, as they are not bothered with connecting the type of experience with the type of improvement.
E.g., you could just have had a run that consisted mostly of legwork and sneaking around, but are free to put your karma into raising your gunnery skill, even though you never used your rocket launcher throughout the run.
We still have an abstracted character improvement ressource, but no restrictions on when to spend it (levels) or templates on the effect it has on your character (classes).

The focus of this approach, and SR in general, is not so much being more realistic than D&D (an approach that was a driving force in the development of many RPGs in the late 70s and early 80s), but increasing possibilities for character customization.
An approach that probably started with the HERO system in the mid-80s and basically came up by redeveloping the realist school of RPG design towards the heroic approach of OD&D, but with keeping the flexibility of the realist games in mind and implementing their mechanisms under a completely new premise, a personalized superhero paradigm that became more or less outspoken in SR and lingered as an underlying, officially denied characteristic in the mechanically highly similar "Storyteller"-systems.


Systems like SR and WoD simply change the packaging size of XP and leave their distribution up to the individual player.
You could as well call karma points something like XP chunks or building blocks, as this is exactly what they are, but karma may have sounded better when the game first came out.

My understanding for why it was called karma, is because of the anti-hero role shadowrunners play in the world. They steal, and kill, and murder, but not because they're bad people, they're just trying to get by/stick it to the man/etc.

Alright, sorry if I got that wrong.

Its True that the original idea of Karma was simply that of cause and effect. Western society has added a connotation to Karma though, taking the idea that the best outcome comes from doing what is most beneficial for the group. If you took a 100 random people in America off the streets and asked them what Karma was, the marjority would say something like "if you do good things, good things will happen to you — if you do bad things, bad things will happen to you". While this is more a concept of 'Spiritualism', it is still the way Karma is viewed in american society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma#Western_interpretation

Shadowrun was made by Western Society, and in earlier versions of the game it seemed to carry the western view of Karma, in that good deeds were often awarded karma, while bad deeds did not.

This is completely true in 2008. For a bit of unsolicited history, WAY back in the day all karma was "bad" karma. It was metaphysical dirt or sin that clung to your soul and made you to heavy to escape this world. Karma had to be purged and resolved in order to ascend. The reconceptualizing of karma exactly as Cain describes it was a Buddhist innovation. Over the next several hundred years most flavors of Hindus adopted the Buddhist version of karma.

"Good" and "Bad" are defined by subjective cultural expectations and thus are unsuitable for application to a cosmic constant. Karma is a real transferable commodity that serves as a metaphysical building block for various forms of metamagic and thus should be no more vulnerable to moral judgements than a brick,a cinderblock, or a piece of plywood.

Moral relativity... how New Age of you. Next you will tell us its ok to kill and eat your neighbor when your hungry... so long as your culture allows it.

I respectfully disagree. There are some things that are good because they simply -are- -good-. It doesnt matter what your culture or religion tells you, its still good. Same goes for evil. Not every decision is black and white, but there are key things that are just plain wrong, no matter who you are.

Thats getting beyond the point though. Clearly Shadowrun does not adopt the original theory of Karma, where an enlightened person attains a state of Dharma, where their actions do not have any karmic weight. Karma in shadowrun is a reward, not a tally of your sins.

In fact, we KNOW they are suggesting there is a 'Good' and 'Bad' karma because in sr3 you are awarded 'Good Karma' and there was a flaw called 'Bad Karma'.

True, but they've done away with that in SR4, replacing it with street cred / notoriety etc. Nowadays, Karma = XP unless you're awakened. If you are awakened, it's (also) a resource, just like Hyzmarca described - how you obtain it may be inherently good or bad (or neither), but the resource itself is free of moral baggage.

Like another person said, that's a Western innovation. But look at it this way: Shadowrunners can murder people in cold blood, betray employers, rob and steal, and basically commit all kinds of "bad" acts-- and they get "good" karma for it.

I have to agree with this. Karma is more a measure of your effect on the universe than a tally of your good and bad deeds.

I'm still sticking to my original answer. The creators of the game just wanted a pretty word in place of "experience points" so as to distance themselves as far from D&D as they could. Occam's razor in full effect. There is no metaphysical reason, explanation, or requirement for it. It's experience points, plain and simple. The only difference is Shadowrun uses a level-less advancement system, so experience points are used as a currency rather than a tally.

"Man, 'experience points' is such a lame term. We need something cooler."
'How about 'karma?'"
"Me likey."

That's about as deep as it really is.

Bad Karma was not about karma collected for doing bad deeds, rather it was a metaphysical metagenetic flaw that reduced your accumulation of Karma Pool. It is emulated in the form of the Bad Luck and Reduced Edge qualities.

Likewise, Good Karma is awarded for completed missions, not necessarily "Good" deeds, though many canon missions cast the players in the Big Damn Heroes role.

Yep, if you read my first post, I agreed with you.



My point was:



I like rewarding good, because without a supernatural force rewarding good, the shadows seem to reward evil more naturally. I like a balancer, and it gives me (and my players) a warm fuzzy when they sacrifice alot for the sake of good. Without it, I am going to have too many evil players (I guess the people I play with yearn to Role Play bastages because IRL they are nice guys with strong morals).

If you get a reward then you aren't making a sacrifice. Upholding a rigid code of moral principals should be difficult and accomplishing the difficult thing should be its own reward. Giving out rewards for "good" behavior means that the PCs are simply so corrupt and peccant that they accept bribes to override their own better judgments.

Of course, I must also question what standards you are using to define "good" because there are many to choose from.

I prefer viewing Karma as a mystical force, a kind of "life energy" if you will. It represents the fruit of work done; the more effective you were, the more objectives you completed, the more Karma you earn. Good vs Evil comes out in the roleplay, not the karma awards... although good roleplay *does* often earn a karma award.

Now, Evil is a tricky one. I don't buy the amoral type, who just burns down an orphanage for fun. I want someone who can justify doing it in character. If he's able to do that, then he may be considered for a roleplay bonus.