Because you want your character to retire

This has to do with your gaming style, not the game. We have an understanding that magically/ubersocially controlling how someone else plays their character is bad. This would apply both to pornomancers that seduce you no matter what gender you prefer, mind control spells in Shadowrun and Dominate in Vampire.

However, using Dominate to restrain someone who frenzies and might attack the coterie is considered legitimate.


It's just a matter of keeping the game fun; some things are possible from an in-game standpoint (mind-controlling PCs), but they too often ruin it for other players. You need to solve that as fair-minded players, not blame the rules for making it possible. (Generally: use the heavy shit against NPCs only, and as GM, treat heavy mind control with the same caution as NPC snipers and well-placed explosives.)


Also, it's a matter of how your group works: is it some mad struggle for absolute power in the party? We don't play like that. If someone tried the rest of the party would unite and kill the tyrant-wannabe. Even a coalition of weaker characters can band together to pressure their plans forwards. Politics isn't just about personal raw power, it's about using alliances. Our games tend to be against some out-of-party bad guy, not a zero-sum struggle in-party.

Like said many time in this thread, buying lifestyle has several hidden benefits. In my opinion, if character has no lifestyle GM has full rights to ask following questions:

*How does the character eat?
-No lifestyle means you have to pay separately for each meal you buy.
-If you don't buy it, you can search dumpsters and similar but finding edible food or any food is not guaranteed.
-I would give penalties and maybe even temporarily decrease physical stats if the character cannot eat enough.

*How do you wash, shave and get fresh clothes?
-I cannot quickly thing anyplace where you could to this for free.
-Of course you can use motels/hotels, but it cost every single time.
-If you don't wash nor get fresh clothes, social penalties follow. (Two runners with identical stats, another clean shaved, shower fresh and neat clothes, another that haven't changed clothes nor shaved for month and also sleeps in same clothes. Which one would you (as a Johnson) choose for the job?)

*Where do you sleep?
-If you have no flat and sleep on the streets, how do you stop people taking your stuff while you sleep?
-If you have more stuff than you can carry, where do you keep it? And how do you make sure that it is still there when you go get it?
-If you sleep on streets, what stop some random ganger finding you and just shooting you in the head while you sleep? Maybe to steal from you or maybe just for shit and giggles.
-Not sleeping enough results fatigue damage.

*How do you move around?
-Every time you use public transportation or call a taxi it costs.
-Or you can walk. All the time. In big city...

If you want to be mean, start rolling random dice every time character sleeps in the streets. When players asks what do you do just explain that you are rolling to see if the character get robbed and/or wounded during the night. Make them sweat. Every now and then make it appear that they barely made the roll. Make them wake up to find some junkie trying to steal their expensive commlink/weapon etc. Or wake up in the middle of gangwar with stray bullets hitting the wall within inches of their faces.
And the same time characters with lifestyles may occasionally have to problems like:
(Squatter) Some wasted junkie/ganger comes to bang your door/walls, but luckily locks hold and he goes away after ten minutes.
(Low) In the middle of shower water runs out or lights flicker and shut of while you were watching your favorite trid.
(Middle) You hear gunshots in the distance, but very soon patrol of Lone Star/Knight Errand/something similar is going that way to take care of it.
(High) Your main chef is sick and you have to go to restaurant instead.
(Luxury) Problems?


Comments?

Bravo Ard3 not only for the great case you made but for getting us back on a shadowrun topic.

No lifestyle, or what would effectively be Streets lifestyle is probably below what most characters would pick (although in previous editions, it wasn't terribly uncommon for a new character to start off with a Squatter lifestyle), but there are probably some character types that would pull this off. Z zone survivalists, ghouls who can't pass for anything else, sewer dwelling lunatics, shapechangers-- things like that. (Going back a couple of editions, I wanted to play a shapechanger who lived in the zoo and just broke out to run. Like Murdock on the A-Team, but a wolf.)

*If you have more stuff than you can carry, where do you keep it? And how do you make sure that it is still there when you go get it?

-Characters with Squatter lifestyles can usually get by with the ubiquitous bus locker, at least until it starts to annoy the GM. If you have contacts you trust, you might also stow gear with them.

*How do you wash, shave and get fresh clothes?

-You might be able to find the 2072 equivalent of the Y. Really, you only need to wash, shave and get clean clothes right before a meet. So a few nuyen at the laundromat. A character might also have a gym membership, they have to pay for it but it's cheaper than upgrading to the next lifestyle.

*Of course you can use motels/hotels, but it cost every single time.
-I've never really considered this before, but for runners who routinely are hitting high security targets, spoofing a motel computer to get a free night's stay is probably not outside the realm of possibility. A character might have a Squatter or Streets lifestyle, and then before a job scam a motel room to get cleaned up.

*The other upside to the Squatter or Street lifestyle is it's probably one of the harder types to track down because unlike the other lifestyles, virtually nothing you have is going to be on record. It doesn't even tie to a fake ID. If a character wanted to be truly invisible in modern society, squatting in the barrens would be the way to do it. (I've thought about making a character like this, when they weren't working they went completely off the grid, but it wasn't as a dodge to lifestyle. If fact, a character who was paranoid to live as a squatter would probably maintain multiple safehouses and back up identities.)

*Where do you sleep? What do you eat?

-Malnutrition and fatigue are good points, but again I think there are certain character types that can survive on the mean streets. I mean, there won't be too many people on the streets who are as tough as a starting shadowrunner-- a character that's going to have problems with the average ganger or squatter is probably not cut out for the life of a professional criminal. Most PC's are going to be fairly high up on the food chain.

*There should probably be a Quality ("Kept Man" or "Trophy Bride") where you get a free Lifestyle. And a Negative ("Ex-Spouse") that means you have to pay another lifestyle.

There is a quality trust fund that requires you have a real SIN but provides a free medium or high lifestyle. Which can be lost if your caught doing illegal activities that get traced back to your real SIN.
The amount of BP it requires being dependent on which version.

One could translate Trust fund to kept man or trophy bride quite easily,

The negative you speak of could be covered by dependent, though unless you have a legal SIN card or your ex-wife is a mafia don's daughter. As a runner your probably not going to have to pay her.

*Any ganger can slit the throat of even a prime runner if the guy is currently asleep.*

I don't really know what is the issue about Predator's Taint, the rule says that when a vampire expects to meet another OR is going to a place where vampires go often (like feeding areas), you may ignore the Predator's Taint or give a huge a bonus for the player. On the other hand, if a vampire is going back home and meets a new vampire at her doorstep, well, the Predator's Taint might kick in with a penalty...
Sorry for derailing the thread again...

No problem, I'll just force it back to topic... again.




I am totally OK with taking Street for roleplaying reasons, but I think it should still affect them. Maybe not often but still.

Bus locker works, but the station may not be always open and available.
Same for contacts. They might be travelling, at work or meeting other people. Or simply having their own problems, so that while you need that gear
right now, it might not be possible. And contacts are always twoway street, they will ask something in return.

The Y, gyms and motels do work, but my point is that even then you have make the effort. Use time, skills and/or money to make it happen. Lifestyle covers it all automatically.

It is true that Street and Squatter are hard to track, but does that balance the drawbacks? Depends on character and groups style.

If you are high in the food chain, some up and coming ganger may off you just to gain reputation. They may not succeed in fair fight, but if they find you sleeping...

*Any ganger can slit the throat of even a prime runner if the guy is currently asleep.*

Yeah, but how many gangers have to die before gangers in general decide there are easier pickin's than rooting around in old buildings looking for a prime runner they hope is asleep?

I'm willing to assume that a Streets or Squatter lifestyle doesn't mean the character is laying on the sidewalk in full view of God and everybody, catching some z's, using a duffelbag full of machine guns as a pillow.

I mean, if the character is Streets or Squatter, he probably knows or is familiar with other Street and Squatter people. They might be squatting in a condemned building to get out of the rain.

Now, what group of gangers is going to think, "Hey, see that building full of people who don't have a dime to their name, who do not have a pot to piss in between them? Let's rob'em!" And assuming they do decide to go screw with them (because gangers like the occasional thrill kill) what are the odds they're going to sneak in and slit the throat of the one guy who's going to wipe the floor with them? I'm going to say "slim".

The other "benefit" (and I use the term loosely) of the Squatter and Streets lifestyle besides anonymity, is that no one is going to believe you have anything worth stealing, because if you did you wouldn't be squatting or living on the streets. For someone who wants to go to ground, being homeless is probably the next best thing to being invisible.

A character could also take gang contacts, or take a homeless shelter supervisor at a decent loyalty, just to make living on the street easier.

Wouldn't that burn way more BPs than it would cost to simply buy a year or two of low lifestyle? I mean loyalty 3/connections 1 shelter supervisor costs 4 BP which is 20k nuyen which could get you 10 months of a low lifestyle.

The low lifestyle seems like the better investment given all the other benefits that come with it unless you're starting at the 250k max for gear, but that just throws a wrench in my belief again that someone has all kinds of super expensive weapons/ammo/armor/'ware and decides that living on the street is the best option to offset paying for that.

The person slitting your throat can be any one that thinks you might have something valuable. To a desperate homeless bum that valuable thing could be your intact coat.
Remember that in dystopian world, no matter how bad you are doing, there is always some one having it worse.

My main point being that taking Street to save BP and money and trying to evade the consequences is IMO big no no.
To take Street for character concept with reasonable explanation, knowing and agreeing that it might cause unfavourable things is ok.

[offtopic]
In my opinion, role->>rollplay.
[/offtopic]

Well, I can't say I've ever played a character who has chosen lower-than-low lifestyles (although I had a couple that started off there), but I don't think it's an entirely indefensible choice. But then, I don't think anything is an entirely indefensible choice. I think there are probably some character types for which it makes sense.

Another way of looking at it, some people end up homeless because they have untreated mental problems that make it hard for them to hold down a regular job. Shadowrunners have a hard time holding down regular jobs, and a lot of them have untreated mental problems. So let's just say the walls between them are probably not insurmountable.

Another type of Streets/Squatter Lifestyle: What about a mage with a shapechange spell and a sustaining focus? Turns into an animal for days at a time, only shows back up to check his messages (or better yet, works it out with his fixer ahead of time so he'll have a job lined up when he comes back).

Personally though, I still don't buy shankings by gangers or squatters to be that big of a threat to the "average shadowrunner" (whatever the hell that means). For in game reasons (a shadowrunner should be pretty close to the apex predator on the streets) and for out of game reasons (the GM is unlikely to tell a player his character got killed in his sleep because his lifestyle was too low).

If the problem is your players won't buy lifestyles because they just aren't going to make the slightest effort to roleplay, I'm not sure that revamping or enforcing the Lifestyle mechanic (or lack thereof) is really going to fix anything. (Although killing their characters in their sleep might get them to quit the game, which would seem like an improvement of sorts to me.)

There's nothing wrong with making lifestyles either a pure "fluff" choice, or making them pay for themselves in various ways.

Only real problem with that is that the mage would have 0 equipment, including clothing, because shapechange doesn't take anything with you.

It would be fairly entertaining to play a character like that and have their animal form be adopted by someone, and so hides away a bit of equipment around the house where the person basically never looks, and using their computer when they aren't home and stuff. Best make it a cat that is allowed to go outdoors and stuff.

Just be careful about getting spade/nudered

(Luxury) Gundam NERPS is on the trid, but you want to watch All My NERPS without going to the trix to download it.

Having never played I can't speak in the affirmative.

However, based on the experiences of people I know, there's more than one way to fuck with the other players (not just Dominate).

Some of it comes down to things that aren't even in the rules, such as a friend of mine wanting to quit one group of [monster] and join up with another group (new character or not) and he can't because he has...some kind of RP legal action against him, which the group refuses to resolve, which means he's not allowed to quit.

Or something. It stopped making sense to me, as I don't LARP and don't understand the organizational structure of these "nation wide" WoD games.

In any case, in the Social-Political Intrigue game that Vampire is, if you have no social-political power, you're losing. If you're a new player, you have no social-political power. I fail to see how anyone can see this as being OK (oh, wait, the winners think its ok, because they're winning).

This problem doesn't seem insurmountable, whether it's leaving gear with a contact or fellow runner, or renting a bus locker. (Mages are a bad example, since they can get by with very little gear. A pair of pants and some armor, and the mage can get by on a run.) Or they simply pull a Terminator. "I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle..."

I'm going to agree here. The character I drew up for my groups next game--while not exactly like this--will have some similar, and interesting, issues.

Yeah, there are ways around it, I'm just saying it is something you have to consider.

Also, I'm fairly sure being naked gives about a -10 DP to intimidation.... unless maybe it's a troll.

That would be a prime moment to change back and tell your "owner" to fuck up.

Because you have to carry around everything you own, they'd know if you had pricey gear. Just by looking at you. If you have to travel very far in the barrens to get to your armor and weapons you could get jumped and killed by a group of gangers you'd normally wipe the floor with. If your trying to look poor you can't have your gear on you. Then of course you have the threat of feral ghouls. Street and squatter life style also doesn't not grant complete protection. Sure your off the grid but that a just protects you from the man. If some underworld types want to find you being in an area outside police control is a boon.

The mafia hitmen flash your picture around the barrens asking whose seen you pass around a little cred and they could figure out what squatter den your hold up in or have hung around. My Face Adept has tracked people down that way. In say a better neighborhood, (or if using runners companion you've paid for decent security). They are likely to draw attention to themselves flashing your image around asking questions.

*and if your so good they can't possibly have a picture of you then the argument of doing street to remain anonymous goes out the window as obviously your skilled enough not to leave identifying evidence behind*
To go completely off the grid and keep yourself from being found. You'd have to shut down your comlink and cease working.

Or maybe some hungry feral ghouls simply decide a group of sleeping squatters are an easy meal. Five or six ghouls aren't a problem for a team or a magician but a street samurai may be in trouble. Maybe not fatal but certainly trouble. Especially if you store your gear elsewhere for safe keeping.

Now you mention having some gang and other contacts for protection, however they won't protect you for free. Your going to need to pay them or do favors in return for that protection. Which is basically buying a life style.

Aside from roleplaying some poverty vow character or similar type. There is NO reason to consistently maintain a street lifestyle. Nothing stops you from ditching your high class condo and going to ground for a little while to avoid the heat tell it dies down.

I've done this, as well as just having a random weird place in the Barrens where I can store my stuff. Although I should point out that it's not like living outside as a rat is more pleasant than living outside as a human: just being an animal doesn't make squatting more fun! Still, magic is a great way to not need a "lifestyle," if you don't mind a simple and strange sort of lifestyle: I mean, barriers? Spells that feed you? Spells that make you breathe underwater, or not feel cold? For that kind of character, that kind of lifestyle is a possible one.

But I guess that's what I don't understand about this issue. I thought the thread was asking "why buy permanent lifestyles," but it seems now like people are defending the idea of having lifestyles at all. Is there really anyone who holds the opposite position? Did I profoundly misunderstand the thread?

I'm 99% sure that the OP just mixed up buying permanently and 'buying' as in renting from month to month.

I believe the thread is more "Why have life styles" than buy.

Anyone who don't understand why a character should have a Lifestyle is playing a different game than I am.

at least you marked it offtopic because it is.

the thread is pretty much predicated on discussing whether or not lifestyles are mechanically worth their mechanical costs, this has nothing to do with the straw-man dichotomy between players who like replacing their feelings with dice and players who would rather play magical tea party.



Street is a perfectly legitimate lifestyle.

My LARP experience is very limited, and I'm not sure the same political "principles" apply in LARP that apply in a given pen and paper group. A major difference would be than pen and paper groups are usually a party of characters that consider each other to be better allies than most of the NPCs.

There are few/no clans without at least a single politically useful discipline, and there are a lot of counters to Dominate;
- Generation / reasing your generation with Thaumaturgy (can't dominate someone with better generation)
- Your own Dominate
- Obfuscate/Stealth (can't dominate what you don't know is there)
- Not making eye contact (Obtenebration, or investing in blind-fighting; avoiding eye contact in conversation, blindfolds, scratching out their eyes)
- Making sure people know you'll take revenge afterwards
- Allies who protect you/take revenge (the enemy of my enemy is an ally, and dominate is a 1:1 power)

Anyway, political power != mental disciplines; it's mostly the player's social skills that determine effectiveness. If someone has lots of disciplines but no real social skills, you can probably recruit enough allies to get rid of that person without personal risk. And if they have serious social skills, then they don't need as many disciplines to run the show.

Also, if you want "fair" balance, you should let new players start with the same amount of XP/karma that existing characters have; this is true in all games.

(And you shouldn't underestimate the political weight of being able to certainly physically kill another character if they piss you off.)

Actually, I believe the OP was suggesting giving each level fo Lifestyle certain mechanical benefits (Edge refresh or bonus Karma related), but it's quickly become a topic why characters should have lifestyles.

I've been playing devil's advocate, for two reasons:

One, I think it's possible there may be valid, roleplaying based reasons why a character would choose a lower-than-low lifestyle. (I've been lumping Squatter in with Streets on the theory that most GM's have the same problem with both.)

The second reason is, if a player's reason for not buying a lifestyle is neither valid or roleplaying based, then the problem isn't going to be solved by making them buy a lifestyle. (Although it may be solved by killing their character in their sleep.)

Now:

In support of the second position, all I can say is, if a player absolutely refuses to make any effort in roleplaying his character, the problem runs much deeper than whether or not said character is paying Lifestyle. You can make them pay rent, but depriving them of 2k a month is going to be of dubious comfort. (Or, to put another way, you can teach a chicken to play the piano but you can't make it love music.)

In support of the first position, all we really have to do is 1) come up with a character personality that a Streets or Squatter lifestyle makes sense for, and 2) assume that the character is willing to put up with the (admittedly monumental) difficulties associated with it. Neither of these things are easy, but I don't think either of them are impossible, either.

Does that mean that all characters don't have to pay lifestyle costs because there is no downside associated with it? Of course not. (If someone wants to argue that point they are free to, but I don't see it.) All I'm saying is, it's not unimaginable.

I absolutely agree that Street can be a perfectly legitimate lifestyle. If your character lives on the streets, that's the lifestyle he should take. [Although to be fair, most people who live on the streets actually have something closer to a Squatter lifestyle; whatever.] If your character lives in a nice house and goes to cool parties and has a nice entertainment system, he should have the High lifestyle, which costs him a particular amount of money.

From my perspective, there's no need to have a mechanical bonus for the cost of a lifestyle; the lifestyle is based on the character's choices, and has a particular monetary cost, and that's as far as it needs to go, in my opinion. You already get karma for being in character; what more do you deserve?

I agree that Street is a legitimate lifestyle, but I think alot of people forget that there are consequences to it, many of which I've tried to point out as have others. These consequences are a mechanical reason why 'you should have a (decent) lifestyle.' beyond simple roleplay.

The truly original point of it stemmed from the idea that in order for a sammy to be effective, she must spend every last nuyen that she comes across on new ware and more bullets/guns. This presented the idea that a sammy was put at a large disadvantage when considering picking up a good lifestyle for RP reasons. A mage on the other hand (Goes the idea) doesn't have to worry about money expenses any, and so can choose to RP his character more freely as he doesn't have to consider the mechanical cost having a good lifestyle will have on him.

Personally, if this concern is valid, I think that making lifestyles more useful, or giving them mechanical benefits such as edge refreshes or bonus karma are the absolute worse way to balance them, as the mage will get a bonus without effort, and the sammy will have to pick between the bonus and the ware.

Think of it like this: How many mages choose to spend karma on RP spells such as healthy glow or detox? I'm sure there are some, just as there are some sammies who have high lifestyles, but the number is likely small. Why? Simple, because they have to give up their main advancement resource, karma, to achieve this RP, and is thus functionally equivalent to a sammy giving up their advancement resource, nuyen, to achieve RP in the form of providing themselves creature comforts that most metahumans would desire.

The main difference is that failing to get a good lifestyle has strong consequences, while failing to get healthy glow has no consequences, and that is the root of the sammy complaint here.

Please note that all that was said as objective observation on what I believe the original view was here. Personally I don't think that sammies suffer that unduly by giving up 2k nuyen a month to at least keep a roof over their head, though it is a shame that I don't see many mages picking up spells purely for RP purposes, such as a drunkard mage who takes Detox to keep himself sober when needed (It would be very easy to not play a drunkard, or even when playing one to play down hangovers and drunkenness) or healthy glow just because .

Well, there is a karma bonus for good roleplaying, which covers a lot of what we're talking about here. Under Karma Awards, Good Roleplaying is worth 1-2 points, and impressing the group with humor or drama is worth 1-2 points. So a player that is roleplaying and contributing could earn up to 4 points more per run than a player that sees his or her character only as a mechanical avatar that unlocks certain tactical avenues of the game.

The discussion usually doesn't get framed in that way, but there is some validity to the point that roleplaying your character is more mechanically advantageous than worrying soley about what is the most mechanically advantageous. I think because the players that enjoy the roleplaying aspect of the game would do it even if there weren't any mechanical awards for it, and the players that aren't interested in roleplaying are seldom willing to "fake it" long enough to rack up any serious karma awards. (Although I think it's a fallacy to think of it in terms of roleplayers and non-roleplayers, since most groups are made up of players who have both rp and mechanical concerns in varying ratios at varying times.)

Don't sammies swim in karma compared to mages?

Yeah, which is part of the supposed problem. A nuyen RP reward would be much more attractive to sammies than a karma one.

(most of this post was, in my opinion, an excellent summary, so I cut it to just the part I wanted to elaborate on.)

it depends heavily on the game, in a game where a typical team pulls in 300k (about 60k each) in a month, even a medium probably isn't an undue cost. (high is pushing it period for sammies mechanically, sadly; unless you're at the point where all your mages are buying luxury lifestyles as second summer homes.)

but in a game where a typical team is pulling about 30k a month (so, like, successful gangers/wageslaves, getting 6k each a mo. or so) - the mages are still probably going to be able to afford a low lifestyle, a bad apartment, a small rowhouse, etc. whereas unless the GM is intentionally restricting Karma to the same extent (so, say, 3-4 karma a month) the tech characters will be dropping every ¥ to keep near the mages in progression; and will be in squatter lifestyles at best, moving from coffin hotel to coffin hotel in puyallup or renton.

kind of a long winded way to say 'cash is relative!' I do wish more mages took more fluff spells, but I'm not sure there's a way to really incentivize it further.*


*RP karma awards would theoretically already make them 'free' over a long enough period of time.

Obviously you don't understand the nation wide WoD LARPing that goes on. New characters (either new players or old ones with new characters) don't get bonus exp.

Ever.

Because otherwise you'd have to figure out how much EXP to give them, and in any case, they'd run out of things to spend it on (what? all of your attributes are at max? when did you do that? a year ago? damn...)

It's like half the fun of playing is completely fucking the new characters.



Oh, my character has a lifestyle, as normal, medium, as per my norm.

I like both, but I tend to prefer Karma. And really it comes out to about the same thing, and extra dice or two (at a time) into the pools.

Money and karma are both advancement mechanics. As a player I like karma more (even for sammies) because I see it as something intrinsic to the character. Karma ups your skills and atts, and that's a part of your character getting better at things. Money is usually something external to the character, but still important. (Cyber and bioware tends to blur the line a little, because the things you buy with money do go inside your character, and are more difficult to get out as opposed to say a gun you can lose or a car you can crash.) Most systems have this twofold path of advancement, some sort of experience mechanic on one side and and some sort of gear mechanic on the other.

I tend to design my characters first as the things themselves (although I would include cyberware in this calculation) and then add gear to that. I don't think that my way is superior to any other way, but I do think that as a player it makes me more resilient to those particular runs where you end up losing all your gear and having to make do with whatever you can scrounge up. (I will say in defense of GMs who are accused of being dicks when they take away a character's gear, most of the times I've lost my gear it's been my own goddamned fault, one way or the other.)

I've played a lot of sammies over the years, or a lot of physically-based characters. My last character in SR2 fell into the diminishing returns camp where he needed 2.2m to get squeeze one more point of reaction into the build, my main character in SR3 was only one piece of cyberware different from the SR2 street sam archetype (Dermal 1 and Plastic Bonelacing vs. Dermal 2), and never upgraded anything. Sometimes I make a character with advancement in mind (why else take at chargen Wired I if not to crawl up out of the mire?) and sometimes I like my character right out of the gate and and fine with making incremental changes with Karma or bits of gear as the campaign moves along.

I haven't really thought about what lifestyles I've seen in play, but it seems like Middle is probably the most common, with Low being slightly more popular than High. I can think of a handful of characters who have started with Squatter or Streets, but none that maintained them once they got that First Run cash in their pockets, and I can think of only one character that ever bought a Luxury lifestyle (and that was an outright retirement buy. I mean, once you got 10m , why not?)

Whhhaaatttt - you're cutting a deal to restrain the power of an ability relative to other archetypes, then jumping on me when I do the same thing. How dumb.

Anyway controlling other vampires is dumb, you control warren buffet, get him to give you millions of dollars then beat people up.

If the problem is that some kinds of characters need money and others need karma, why not allow the solution of trading between them?

I've never been wild about the Kash for Karma mechanics, 3278, mainly because karma is a metagame mechanic and cash is an in-game mechanic. I'm not wild about characters trading transcendental life essences for existential goodies.

I know as a general rule mages need their karma and sammies need their cash but I've never had a problem spending money with my mages and I've never been at a loss for what to spend my karma on with my sammies. (Full disclosure: All my long term characters have been physical types though.)

I still say the best way to solve the wild disparity between team members is to have the sammie pay half what he would pay for a Low Lifestyle to piggyback on the mage's High Lifestyle. Almost every SR game I have played in, if I've played in it long enough, has taken elements from The Odd Couple.

I think perhaps the issue (and the interpretations of same) can truly be boiled down to a couple of simple points:

1. Are the existing benefits as given in RAW or RC sufficient for the character to justify forking out X amount of cash every month? Do the benefits of the lifestyle fit with the idea of the character as you are playing? Does it make sense for for your mage to live in a wheeliebin (yes for shammies living with some urban totem, not for someone following the Wuxing tradition) or for your razorboi to live the international jet-set? Do you, your GM and your fellow players benefit from your choices (roleplaying options, storyline direction, etc, etc)? This leads to:

2. Your group. Not the characters. You. Your mate Adrian. Sam the GM. His girlfriend. Mike, who no one really likes but you invite him anyway 'cos he loves playing hackers, (when you all hate it) and he always brings good snacks. Y'know the people you get together with every week (or fortnight, or month, or...) and play a little bit of Shadowrun. It comes down to your dynamic, what y'all expect to get out of a game and the degree to which you're willing to tweak the rules. A group who leans heavy on the roleplay side of the scale will probably end up forking out the nuyen for the digs that are appropriate for the campaign/group/whatever. A group that leans heavily on the big-guns-and-explosions side will care less about where you are resting your head (this is where the realism question rears its ugly head, but that's a shouting match for another thread and another day).

I personally play in a roleplay-leaning group, and a good GM (within my own bias) will find a way to fit with the overwhelming consensus of the group as to what needs to be done. Perhaps the razorboi is running out of dosh and can't keep up, suddenly the runs start paying more. Now the mage is getting too wealthy, flaunting his money, so some nefarious thief manages to sneak into his apartment, past his high class security and steal several priceless pieces of art, leaving no evidence behind. Now the team has a new adventure to track down the stolen artwork, and the trail leads to Berlin and Saeder-Krupp HQ. They promptly abandon the art 'cos no amount of paint and canvas is worth pissing off Lowfyr.

Shadowrun is at it's heart a dynamic game able to be adapted to your style. Why buy lifestyles? Whatever reason you can justify. Everyone needs somewhere to hang their hat.

They're...tithing money to churches, and giving to charity. Or winning money at the track. Yeah, that's it. I'm with you: I don't particularly like the idea, although if a player were feeling its necessity deeply enough, I wouldn't sweat it.


I've never particularly found it to be a problem. Different types of people have different types of needs; I don't find that particularly problematic, either.

My group's GM has only allowed Cash -> Karma, not the other way. And you had to find your own company to donate to, one that made sense to grant you personally Karma. A toxic mage, for instance, could donate to a garbage dump.

Uh, Karma to Cash is even easier to explain. It includes winning a Quick Pick lottery or even just finding a credstick on the street.

How does one decide to go looking for lost credsticks? Or decide to win the lottery?

Karma isn't luck.

It makes the player make a very odd choice. "Do I get better at Electronics or do I win the lottery?"

I don't think that using the Karma for Cash mechanic is the end of the world, it's just not one of those rules I particularly cared for. (I wasn't wild about Hand of God either, although I have mellowed somewhat over the years.)

Don't be rude. I understand this.

It makes sense to make new characters start from scratch; otherwise you might as well give no XP to the old ones. Of course, if your character has no sire, no mentor, no allies etc, yeah, you're an easy target alright. Why don't you have those things?



If some players make a habit of hazing new characters (I've heard about that), then consider the players, not the game system. If they're jerks, they'll be jerks regardless of what game you play.

Randomly bullying characters isn't very good politics; you create enemies you don't need. Also, most games take place in Elysium, you might want to be careful in using disciplines there.

This isn't limited to Vampire; we use this principle in all games I'm involved in.

1) You don't ruin other players' fun.
2) You can't force other people to play their character in a way that they don't want to.


This means there are limits to how far you can go with mind control powers - even as GM. PCs aren't immune, but the players must consider how far you can go while keeping the game fun for everyone.

If I was going to allow karma -> cash or cash -> karma I would likely do it via a NPC mage that buys and sells "existential energies" for a profit.

Yeah, and you can't spend karma either. Except in Shadowrun, where you can. If you're spending it for cash, that means you've likely done deeds with it where the universe decides to repay you. Consciously you didn't go "looking" for the lost credstick, you just happened upon it as the universe repays you for whatever it is you've done in the past to earn the karma you're "spending" on it. Maybe you helped a little old lady across the road and, bam, ten minutes later you stumble upon a credstick. Or whatever else. The fact that you, as a player, chose to "spend" your karma in that fashion is completely unrelated to the actual result of that spending. In other words, OOC actions != IC actions. Which one would think is pretty obvious.

Using your logic, karma isn't experience points either. Yet it gets spent that way more often than not.

Karma -> Cash:

1) Sell it to a free spirit who will not be mentioned further
2) "Instead of training, you spend time doing small jobs. You don't learn anything new, but it's some pocket money."

Cash -> Karma:
1) The best teachers money can buy (have to spend the karma immediately)

I'm sure more rationalizations are possible.

I'm still intrigued by the idea of only allowing cash-karma trades between PCs; I wonder what the "market price" would be.

I don't play, I can't answer the question.



I'll admit that the system from 0 exp for everyone involved generally turns out well.



If we ignore karma for cash here for a minute and look at all of the ways karma can be spent (including through free spirits) all of them can be seen as a choice by the character:

Learning new active skills ("I'll take a class")
Learning new knowledge skills ("I want to know more about stuff")
Training attributes ("I'll hit up the gym")
Resolving a flaw ("I want to get that monkey off my back")
Learning spells ("I need to memorize this")
Binding foci ("I want this working for me")
Voluntary choice in exchange for some of the magic of a free spirit
Initiate ("I want to be better at magic")
Buy contacts ("I'd like to make a few more friends")
Acquiring a new trait (gamemaster awards it if it is appropriate, which is still based on something the character has done)
Become infected with HMHVV

I don't think I missed any.
With the exception of becoming infected, all of them are based on something the character did. Of the remaining, only acquiring a new positive quality is done without conscious choice, but is not chosen by the player either.