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Brol_The_Mighty
So, going through SR4A, and came across the Karma table. I was wondering...does anyone actually USE this table? To me, unless you plan on having your campaign last a really long time, its Karma rewards are just too low. For some char types (Sams) its not too bad, because you're more about gear than skills...but for say, adepts, TM's, and Mages, it would take forever to advance. So my question to the GM's out there, is, what's your standard Karma rewards, and for what? For what pace of game do you play?
AngelisStorm
Didn't the increase the karma awards in SR4A?

*goes to check*

Seems like an easy 5-6 karma per run. I can see the problem if a run is taking multiple game sessions to complete, but if 1 game session = 1 run, what's the problem?
Medicineman
The New 4A Table (average 7-10 Karma per Run) is even better than the old SR4 Table (5-6 Karma per Run)

with a better Dance
Medicineman
Brol_The_Mighty
Hadn't seen the new table in SR4A, was going off of what our GM had said. I agree with the table in this instance, that per RUN, that's a good setup for rewards. Especially if its 1 session per run....with multiple session runs being rewarded more.
Dahrken
QUOTE (Medicineman @ Mar 7 2010, 12:26 PM) *
The New 4A Table (average 7-10 Karma per Run) is even better than the old SR4 Table (5-6 Karma per Run)

I guess this was intended to balance out the increased cost of increasing attributes.
Brol_The_Mighty
So do people find that its enough for a decently paced game then?
TheOOB
QUOTE (Brol_The_Mighty @ Mar 7 2010, 07:14 AM) *
So do people find that its enough for a decently paced game then?


It depends what feel you want, how quickly you want to advance, how many party members are awakened, and how long the campaign is. Shorter campaigns should have higher rewards so the characters gain a sense of advancement, while longer campaigns can do a little bit lower so the GM can keep a leash on character development. Awakened characters use more karma than nuyen, so if you have a lot of awakened characters consider higher karma runs than higher nuyen runs, and visa versa for teams with little to no magic.

But in any case, I find that with my group at least, an average of 8 karma per run works pretty well. I'll drop it down to 7 if they didn't complete their objectives well, and I'll raise it to 9 or 10 if the run was particularly hard. I'll also add 3-4 points for each additional pay session the run lasts even if the run is easy because even if a session doesn't matter to the characters, they matter to the players. Then again, I prefer fairly quick advancement, it's my experience that most characters don't get too powerful to manage until after several hundred karma.
D2F
QUOTE (Medicineman @ Mar 7 2010, 12:26 PM) *
The New 4A Table (average 7-10 Karma per Run) is even better than the old SR4 Table (5-6 Karma per Run)

with a better Dance
Medicineman


What he said.
Brol_The_Mighty
Everyone in my party is either Awakened (2 Adepts and a Mage) or a TM.
SleepIncarnate
QUOTE (Brol_The_Mighty @ Mar 7 2010, 07:11 AM) *
Everyone in my party is either Awakened (2 Adepts and a Mage) or a TM.


Then yes, you'll want it to go faster.... those higher levels of Magic and Resonance get expensive fast.
Ghremdal
I suggest that if you are increasing karma, you should up the nuyen per run as well. Or gear dependent characters will be out of luck (and even fall more quickly behind).
SleepIncarnate
If his group is 2 adepts, a mage, and a TM, they're not exactly gear dependent. Not unless the adepts are gunslingers or tech head adepts or something.
Summerstorm
"Enough" Karma? Yeah pretty much. My Group doesn't play that often and up till now i gave them just little downtime (They still don't really know what to do with it, it's all: Workworkwork with them) So ingame only two and a half months has passed and the magician is working on her second initiation. (I wouldn't let her initiate two times without some preparation time)

But a busy character in SR4 which takes (and survives) demanding missions all the time earns so much Karma it is insane. They get more per month than a normal person in maybe five years. The only thing that slows them down IS the high cost of super-high attributes. (The prospect of saving up so long while you can just get initiation for like NOTHING makes it a bit better *g*)

But i forsee that my magician will have a crapload of metamagics and bound focii soon. Ah well, at least i can slow her down with focus-addiction then.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
The Table Awards in SR4A have worked out well for our table...

On Short runs (1-2 Sessions) this amount is just right... we have a lot of these interspersed short runs through out the campaign... mostly personal goals or things that are designed to help out our contacts, filling in favors, and what not...

Standard Runs take from 2-4 Sessions, Dependant upon Objective, and we get 2-3 per session, with Run Completion netting us more...

Interspersed throughout the campaign, we also have the Major Campaign Advancement Runs, these tend to take more than 10+ Sessions... on these, we gain 2-3 points per session on the Main Concern (in addition to any for completing a Short Run) and then a completion Karma Award that is towards the upper end of the Chart once the Major Campaign Advancement Run has completed. We have been pursuing a Major Plot Development for well over a 15 Months now (we game every Friday), in between Standard Business Runs and Short Personal Runs, when we can fit it in.

Characters have a good spread of Karma between them...

The Technomancer has 200 Karma
The Hacker has 266 Karma
The Triad Liason has 300 Karma
The Triad Lieutenant has 200 Karma
The Street Samurai has about 160 Karma (Joined the Game Late)
and The Magician has 250 Karma

As you can see, the Triad Liason has the most, as he has been the only character that has had an uninterrupted Shadow Existence... Our Previous Mage Died... the Hacker spent some time in Prison before he was able to extricate himself from the clutches of Mitsuhama, and the Street Sam's Player had to bow out of the game when he moved... leaving us with a search for a new Street Samurai... which we eventually found.

Advacement has been steady and we have had no real issues... the longest played characters (The Hacker and the Liason)have been in this campaign for the last 30 Months or so...

Hope that this helps...

Keep the Faith
Brol_The_Mighty
30 months of every Friday......wow. In your case, I can understand...you don't want them to advance too quickly. For an every Friday game, that sounds about right.
Fatum
Frankly, I for one think that being able to improve their characters' abilities is quite rewarding for players, so I am quite generous when giving away Karma.
A classic example of a system done right is Dark Heresy - each session a player gets some 100 to 200 exp, and can acquire a skill or an ability or that.
I try to act along the same guidelines, giving some 2 to 5 Karma per session, based on achievements and each character's participation. Same goes for money - going to session after session for a month or two with the same stats and skills and equipment is extremely boring, after all.
Patrick the Gnome
QUOTE (Ghremdal @ Mar 7 2010, 09:10 AM) *
I suggest that if you are increasing karma, you should up the nuyen per run as well. Or gear dependent characters will be out of luck (and even fall more quickly behind).


I think a good way of handling this is to have nuyen and Karma be exchangeable, justify it as the group getting paid and then donating money to some character driven purpose, such as a charity or family or a religion. Depending on your group this exchange rate might be different but I'd think the base 1 karma for 2500 nuyen would probably work out in general. Then you can decide how much karma you want to give players per session and they can decide how much of that they want to be nuyen and how much they want to be karma. This way, the players get to decide how they advance and there's less danger of one type of character outclassing the others.
Method
I think it depends entirely on the game you play in and how often your group changes out characters.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (Brol_The_Mighty @ Mar 7 2010, 01:15 PM) *
30 months of every Friday......wow. In your case, I can understand...you don't want them to advance too quickly. For an every Friday game, that sounds about right.



Yeah, It hasn't been too bad... and we are able to advance characters fairly quickly in comparison to the game world... of course, this may not synch up with other tables, but it works for us...

Hell, I have 37 Active Skills and 24 Knowledge SKills... with a laundry list of other skills I am in need of...Let alone any gear that might come along...

We don't do too bad...

Keep the Faith
Method
It must be a nightmare if someone wants to change characters. Do you use the Karma Build rules and let them build a character that is average for your game?
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (Method @ Mar 7 2010, 08:03 PM) *
It must be a nightmare if someone wants to change characters. Do you use the Karma Build rules and let them build a character that is average for your game?



Not too bad actually...

We use normal BP for builds on replacement characters... tehn the GM provides around 100 XP to flesh out the character, so a replacement character will start in the neighborhood of 100 Karma... then they discuss things like contacts and equipment obtained after character Generation... we have had 4 replacement Characters (The Mage, The Technomancer The Street Sam and the Triad Lieutenant)... So, though they are not on par with the regular characters that started, they are not newbs right off of the streets either...

I imagine that once we all crest the 300 Karma mark, and if we then need a new character to join us, the Karma awarded may be bumped to 150 points or thereabouts...

Seems to work out pretty well...

Keep the Faith
Fatum
But wouldn't a 100-something Karma gap kinda imbalance the team, making some characters necessarily dominating the game?
Everything we play, a character dies, a new one is rolled with roughly the same power level as the rest of the team, minus maybe some slight penalty that's offset by the fact that the player now knows what's his character is likely to be up to.
SleepIncarnate
That depends, really. I joined a group playing a 400 BP troll phys-ad and kept up just fine with the 150-200 karma street sam who even after buying off notoriety several times still had a public awareness of like 3 or 4, and in fact I was better in a few areas to him (especially taking and dealing damage in close combat). So could a 100 karma gap imbalance the game? Maybe. But maybe not. Depends on the players and characters and how well the players know how to play their characters. A TM can dominate in meat space if they want to, despite what everyone says.
Whipstitch
QUOTE (Fatum @ Mar 8 2010, 12:07 AM) *
But wouldn't a 100-something Karma gap kinda imbalance the team, making some characters necessarily dominating the game?


It's rather easy to build a character with a whole brick of dice in his primary skill set to start with, so being able to competently fill your role on the team shouldn't be that big of an issue unless your chargen fu is weak. Awakened types can be a bit problematic since initiation can open doors that a fresh character simply cannot under standard rules, but that's about the biggest problem. After all, the higher the rating, the more expensive it is to improve; mundanes in particular have a tendency to branch out and become more well-rounded characters as opposed to attaining ridiculous overall dice pools that require a complete retooling of opposition forces. A post-karma Samurai can certainly be a better shot than his 400 bp counterpart, but that's a far cry from saying that a 15 dice in automatics chargen samurai can't hit the broad side of a barn.
Fatum
Of course, when asking about balancing issues, I'm not taking characters who spend karma to redeem their own failures into account. (He could have bought Erased and have some plastic surgery and that'd still cost him less, btw).

Hm, and how would a TM do that? Massive rigging?
Fatum
QUOTE (Whipstitch @ Mar 8 2010, 07:35 AM) *
mundanes in particular have a tendency to branch out and become more well-rounded characters


And that's exactly my point, actually - besides being better at his specific task, a high-Karma character is also competent in quite a number of other things, thus limiting the new-comer to a fraction of the action the experienced one gets.
Whipstitch
And the problem here is...? I mean, really, you're going to be bummed out that your Samurai who defaults to 3 charisma got upstaged by the Samurai who rolls 6 dice and can slice a maglock? What was the new guy going to do about the situation without the experienced samurai? If your answer is "Get the face to do it," then the situation frankly hasn't really changed much. When combat rolls around you'll still likely have a chance to get up to whatever shenanigans you would have with a team of entirely fresh characters.
Fatum
And the problem here is that some players get more spotlight than others. Massively more.
Whipstitch
But everyone is still playing out the scenario. I mean, I guess if you shove a thumb up your butt every time someone else is rolling dice for a while, that's one issue, but most of the game is still planning and your character should still be good enough in their specialty to do things throughout. Honestly, after a while the biggest problem with a high karma game is the fact that the group has an answer for everything. That the answer may be "Have Bob do it," is relatively small potatoes, actually, particularly since anyone can make a suggestion as to how the group should approach the problem. Maybe it's just me, but I've never really had an issue with feeling left out just because someone else's dicepool was used to fulfill my plan.
Fatum
QUOTE (Whipstitch @ Mar 8 2010, 07:53 AM) *
I mean, I guess if you shove a thumb up your butt every time someone else is rolling dice for a while, that's one issue,

What a nice assumption of you to make. You are clearly a gentleman and a scholar.

Look, planning is a-ok and all, but one player getting a chance to use his character's abilities during the run itself several times as frequently as the other is not an attractive prospect for most players. Besides, there's a whole strata of specialists that don't even normally use their main skills if the run is going smooth.

Oh, you've edited while I was typing the reply.
QUOTE (Whipstitch @ Mar 8 2010, 07:53 AM) *
Maybe it's just me, but I've never really had an issue with feeling left out just because someone else's dicepool was used to fulfill my plan.

Well, that's more answering the question now.
Sure, that can go well as long as all the party members get their share in the planning, and not just the face and the hacker as the ones getting most info.
SleepIncarnate
QUOTE (Fatum @ Mar 7 2010, 10:39 PM) *
Of course, when asking about balancing issues, I'm not taking characters who spend karma to redeem their own failures into account. (He could have bought Erased and have some plastic surgery and that'd still cost him less, btw).

Hm, and how would a TM do that? Massive rigging?

Not necessarily. Compile and register a decent rating (6 or higher) machine sprite and put it in a single good drone, and you've got a drone that can rock combat as good as a street sam, which a fresh from chargen TM can pull off. Rating 6 + Autosoft 6 + 2 hotsim VR bonus = 14 dice minimum pool, adding 2 dice for each extra rating. With a few grades of submersion, the TM can have Biowires and 3 ranks of Acceleration, which then means they can add up to 4 dice in any skill as long as they have a skill soft of it, and have 4 IP in meatspace. Or with just two grades of submersion get Skinlink and Resonance Trodes and they can pull anyone into hotsim VR with just a touch, and destroy them with Black IC. Or compile a good crack or fault sprite and have them hack an enemy's PAN while you're doing stuff in meatspace. Everyone oversimplifies TMs as being Gods of the Matrix but beat up by one armed babies in the meat, and that may be how most people build them, but it doesn't have to be.
Whipstitch
QUOTE (Fatum @ Mar 8 2010, 01:00 AM) *
Besides, there's a whole strata of specialists that don't even normally use their main skills if the run is going smooth.


That's an issue that can come up at any table at any dice pool level and in my experience it's not really impacted by karma unless we're talking about really, really high amounts. What you're actually worried about here is role overlap, and it's frankly rather hard for say, the 400 bp plus Karma Samurai to get so good at social skills that another player adding a 400bp Face into the group is going to be an outright disaster. Now, it is an issue that having, say, 2 Faces in one group doesn't mesh well, but that's again something that occurs at any karma level. Anyway, I've found more often than not adding a new character into the mix simply ends up rendering some of the lateral advancement existing characters have already made superfluous.
Fatum
QUOTE (SleepIncarnate @ Mar 8 2010, 08:00 AM) *
Everyone oversimplifies TMs as being Gods of the Matrix but beat up by one armed babies in the meat, and that may be how most people build them, but it doesn't have to be.

Well, as a matter of fact, that becomes a question of balance. If you spend three Submersion Grades on being effective in meatspace, you miss all the tasty stuff you could be getting with them put to use for Matrix abilities, right? Which essentially makes you mediocre at both RL and online combat.

QUOTE (Whipstitch @ Mar 8 2010, 08:06 AM) *
Anyway, I've found more often than not adding a new character into the mix simply ends up rendering some of the lateral advancement existing characters have already made superfluous.

Yeah, I see your point.
Saint Sithney
QUOTE (Patrick the Gnome @ Mar 7 2010, 06:46 PM) *
I think a good way of handling this is to have nuyen and Karma be exchangeable, justify it as the group getting paid and then donating money to some character driven purpose, such as a charity or family or a religion. Depending on your group this exchange rate might be different but I'd think the base 1 karma for 2500 nuyen would probably work out in general. Then you can decide how much karma you want to give players per session and they can decide how much of that they want to be nuyen and how much they want to be karma. This way, the players get to decide how they advance and there's less danger of one type of character outclassing the others.


I wouldn't let them throw 50k in cash straight to 20 karma, hells no. However, I would let them buy some karma, as if it were good role-playing points. Spending money on personal things is good role-playing. Maybe 5 karma worth of money per session where the character has such an opportunity...
Whipstitch
Nah, see, I just think of that as gumming up the works a bit. I might toss a guy some karma for doing something that amuses me or really furthers the character/scene once in a while, but anybody who's banking on getting something in return for buying 3,500 nuyen worth of NERPS a session is likely to end up being disappointed. The way I handle it is that if you want to get real good at something and you have the nuyen to burn, then well, you better go find a skilled teacher and grease their palm. Spending downtime and nuyen on self-improvement is certainly worth some karma, the way I see it. You'll have to maintain a good relationship and put in some time to keep the arrangement going though, just like with any contact.
Semerkhet
Back to the topic, I think karma awards are totally subjective, depending on a number of factors for each group. I've got a group of players in their late 30's with careers and families. We manage to play every two weeks, but not always a long session. Our runs tend toward the complex side and take a minimum of two sessions but more often three to five sessions. Because of this I award the non-goal Karma on a per-session basis and award Karma for objectives in the session in which they are fulfilled. This can result in a total Karma award of up to twenty for a four or five session run, but that run took place over two and a half months of real time. I also up the nuyen flow to keep pace with the elevated Karma awards. If I didn't do it this way, character advancement would be painfully slow, especially for the magician and physad.
SleepIncarnate
QUOTE (Fatum @ Mar 7 2010, 11:18 PM) *
Well, as a matter of fact, that becomes a question of balance. If you spend three Submersion Grades on being effective in meatspace, you miss all the tasty stuff you could be getting with them put to use for Matrix abilities, right? Which essentially makes you mediocre at both RL and online combat.


Not necessarily. Being able to hack as fast (or faster) in AR as an unemerged hacker can in hot sim VR is still handy, means you're that much better on runs where you have to go in the flesh, and not having to either drop into VR and be dragged around by your team every few minutes or be nerfed completely in your area of expertise because you're forced into a bad situation.
Fatum
QUOTE (SleepIncarnate @ Mar 8 2010, 08:07 PM) *
Not necessarily. Being able to hack as fast (or faster) in AR as an unemerged hacker can in hot sim VR is still handy, means you're that much better on runs where you have to go in the flesh, and not having to either drop into VR and be dragged around by your team every few minutes or be nerfed completely in your area of expertise because you're forced into a bad situation.


Uh, by the time you get two echoes a hacker is getting his hot VR IPs to 5. You could as well, with two different ones - so it's the other way round, you can be sure you're slower than the hacker in VR.
SleepIncarnate
But is that hacker focusing on his VR at the expense of his AR? And as discussed in another thread already, for 2 echoes you can pull anyone into the Matrix with just a touch and fry them with Black Hammer, thus allowing you to still be effective in meatspace. I didn't say a TM is going to neglect their Matrix stuff, and in fact, just by submersion and increasing Resonance, they're increasing their Matrix abilities to levels unemerged hackers can only dream of, due to higher CF and threading limits and higher rating sprites. So even if they pick echoes that lean more towards meatspace stuff, just by submerging and increasing their Resonance, they're still keeping up with or exceeding the regular hacker who focuses on Matrix only. So no, a TM doesn't have to be the "God of the Matrix, terrified kitten in the real world" kind of character everyone thinks they are. If you want to see more of the discussion, here's the other thread where we're discussing it.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=30104
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (Fatum @ Mar 7 2010, 09:07 PM) *
But wouldn't a 100-something Karma gap kinda imbalance the team, making some characters necessarily dominating the game?
Everything we play, a character dies, a new one is rolled with roughly the same power level as the rest of the team, minus maybe some slight penalty that's offset by the fact that the player now knows what's his character is likely to be up to.



We have never noticed much of a discrepency between the characters except possibly in the breadth of skills... and in fact, many of the newer characters are completely capable of dominating the 300 Karma Character...

Could it happen, sure, but it does not do so at our table very often...

Keep the Faith
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (Fatum @ Mar 7 2010, 09:49 PM) *
And the problem here is that some players get more spotlight than others. Massively more.


Ironically, Fatum, the more experienced characters tend to get a bit less playtime (Screentime) than the less experienced characters...

As I said, their is very little overall difference at our table between the 200 Karma point character and the 300 Karma point character...

Keep the Faith
makari
I'm just curious, as a sidenote... how long are your average sessions and whats the average runs per session?


we play 1 day a week for 6-8 hrs and usually complete 2-3 runs, maybe down to a single run if it's a large story arc or something similarly dramatic happens. and I'd say average about 10 karma per night.
SleepIncarnate
I had a group that would meet up 1 day a week for 4-6 hours, and we'd do 1 run in that night, with your average 5-6 karma awards (this was before SR4A was out). The ther group I had at that time was also once a week for a few hours, but it took us a few sessions to get through the one and only run we did before it fell apart (the On the Run one to be specific, and we only did about half of it). So it depends on the group.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (makari @ Mar 8 2010, 08:25 PM) *
I'm just curious, as a sidenote... how long are your average sessions and whats the average runs per session?

we play 1 day a week for 6-8 hrs and usually complete 2-3 runs, maybe down to a single run if it's a large story arc or something similarly dramatic happens. and I'd say average about 10 karma per night.



As stated previously, we have various run lengths, depending upon the type of run (Personal, Standard, Campaign Modifying)... We get together on Fridays from 1900 to no later than 0100 (well, okay sometimes as late as 0200, but rarely) Saturday Morning... so about 6 hours per session (or thereabouts), and we gain 2 point Karma/Session (for a Non Completed Run) to as much as 10 Karma for a Completed Campaign Modifying Run... some runs take as little as a session or two (typically Personal Runs), while others are 2-4 Sessions (Sometimes as many as 5, for Standard Level "Johnson" Runs) with the Epic Level Campaing Modifying runs that can last months or years... As I have said previously, we are hopefully coming to a close on the big Campaing Run that we have been pursuing over the last 15+ Months or so...

That said... our runs are very interspersed with possibly all three types/styles of runs running simultaneously, and as such finish on their own set schedules... I have had both a specific personal scale run and a Standard run complete at the same time netting me a good chunk of Karma (somewhere around the 9-10 mark between the two of them)... Average Karma Award for a Standard "Johnson" run is 2/Session with a completion amount equaling between 6-9 points...

Does this provide a better picture?

Keep the Faith
makari
yeah, how about how your average session breaks down?

I'm finding this very interesting...

like I said, our sessions are 6-8 ave hours with we'll say 2 runs getting done so 3-4 hrs averaging for a standard non-storyarc run

of that 3-4 hours of time used for the run I'd say with us we spend ATLEAST 1 hour in planning mode (I'd say on average, regardless of what the run is, we tend to spend atleast 1/4 of the total time in early planning, and I've seen this go up to 4-5 hours of early stage planning for large runs), with very little rolling limited to knowledge skills and getting some extremely basic legwork done

then I'd say average another .5 to 1 hour spent on true legwork, rolls to get all equipment and or social engineering underway, etc... getting everything that can be gotten for the run before the point of no return

then the next 1 to 2 hours spent on the actual run, combat, etc...

and the last .5 to 1 hour spent on the getaway and then the final meet if necessary with the johnson and payment


I'm just really curious because I know our group focus's a lot on planning and legwork, and I dont know if that's normal or not

are there groups out there that reverse this? half an hour of planning, 2-3 hours of running, half an hour of rapping up?


edit: thought it was worth mentioning, the planning and legwork time isn't because our group is hacker heavy or anything where the character playstyles lean towards this... we have a pretty even group at all times, I think it's just our groups general mentality.
Semerkhet
QUOTE (makari @ Mar 8 2010, 09:25 PM) *
I'm just curious, as a sidenote... how long are your average sessions and whats the average runs per session?


we play 1 day a week for 6-8 hrs and usually complete 2-3 runs, maybe down to a single run if it's a large story arc or something similarly dramatic happens. and I'd say average about 10 karma per night.

Good example of the diversity in play styles. I can't conceive of completing 2-3 runs in a single session. The shortest one I've ever run took two sessions of about 5-6 hours each. We average about three sessions per run, but the sessions are in the 4-6 hour range. Still, that means that your group is completing approximately one job for every four your group is completing. eek.gif
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (makari @ Mar 8 2010, 09:05 PM) *
yeah, how about how your average session breaks down?

I'm finding this very interesting...

like I said, our sessions are 6-8 ave hours with we'll say 2 runs getting done so 3-4 hrs averaging for a standard non-storyarc run

of that 3-4 hours of time used for the run I'd say with us we spend ATLEAST 1 hour in planning mode (I'd say on average, regardless of what the run is, we tend to spend atleast 1/4 of the total time in early planning, and I've seen this go up to 4-5 hours of early stage planning for large runs), with very little rolling limited to knowledge skills and getting some extremely basic legwork done

then I'd say average another .5 to 1 hour spent on true legwork, rolls to get all equipment and or social engineering underway, etc... getting everything that can be gotten for the run before the point of no return

then the next 1 to 2 hours spent on the actual run, combat, etc...

and the last .5 to 1 hour spent on the getaway and then the final meet if necessary with the johnson and payment


I'm just really curious because I know our group focus's a lot on planning and legwork, and I dont know if that's normal or not

are there groups out there that reverse this? half an hour of planning, 2-3 hours of running, half an hour of rapping up?


edit: thought it was worth mentioning, the planning and legwork time isn't because our group is hacker heavy or anything where the character playstyles lean towards this... we have a pretty even group at all times, I think it's just our groups general mentality.


We Get the Job (or develop one for personal stories/favors)... The initial meet takes about 30 minutes or so,between the conversations and whatnot...

Data Mining/Intelligence gathering takes several hours if not a full session, as we run down leads, canvas our contacts for relevant information and data mine the Matrix... sometimes we are calling in favors of our own during this time to get a better picture of what we may be facing, or trying to track down the Johnson to see who is behind the scenes...

Planning has taken anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours , depending upon the complexity of the run, and where we are going... this will generally include logistical support and arrangements for transportation if needed...

Some actual Runs will take less time than the planning does, though I can remember run time being a session or two on really complicated runs, with multiple objectives... but I will ballpark a figure of 6-10 Hours Gametime for convenience, including Combat resolution...

Evasion and Escape with rendezvous after the completion of the run make take as much as 2 hours, depending upon what happened at the Mission Site... I remember once we had a high speed aerial chase through the city of Honk Kong for almost 2 hours of game time as we tried to evade everyone that was after us (Specifically Mitsuhama and Evo (I think)), while trying to avoid adding additional antagonists to those chasing us... it was a really good time, full of intense stunts and aerial combat...

As you saw from our team composition, we have a fairly diverse group, and can cover each other pretty well, especially when it comes to the Leg Work portion of the runs... Racial Makeup is 2 Orks (Street Sam and Technomancer) and 4 Humans (Mage, Hacker, Triad Lieutenant, and Triad Liason)...

Now, I will say that while we are planning a run, we are also pursuing personal agendas and possibly concluding some personal runs as well... we have fairly good immersion and in depth characterization (for the most part) and it works out pretty well for us...

Keep the Faith
toturi
I have noticed that at the higher levels of karma, magicians tend to branch out rather than continue on their theorectically infinite stat progression. After I have noticed in my games, that once the Awakened characters hit Magic 9 or so, they start to branch out agressively into areas that weren't their primary concern.

A Sorcery mage might start brushing up on his Conjuring. A combat adept might start to buy skills that has nothing to do with combat. Once their Magic is able to take the hit from Background Count, the Awakened at my table all branched out.
SleepIncarnate
Sure, as a Mage or Adept continues to build their Magic (and Metamagic) it affects all their stuff, so why not branch out into conjuring or non-combat stuff? They're still getting more powerful in those areas that are their primary focus every time they initiate and increase Magic. Technomancers are much the same, picking up more rigging stuff if hackers or more hacker stuff if riggers, simply because most CF's don't need to be higher than 7 or 8, so they start picking up all of them, only buying a couple (like stealth) up every time they increase Resonance.
EuroShadow
QUOTE (Brol_The_Mighty @ Mar 7 2010, 01:18 PM) *
So, going through SR4A, and came across the Karma table. I was wondering...does anyone actually USE this table? To me, unless you plan on having your campaign last a really long time, its Karma rewards are just too low. For some char types (Sams) its not too bad, because you're more about gear than skills...but for say, adepts, TM's, and Mages, it would take forever to advance. So my question to the GM's out there, is, what's your standard Karma rewards, and for what? For what pace of game do you play?


Yes, I do.
And yes it's standard. Once, they screwed up the run and got only 1 Karma per session.

And it is slow-paced game. I feel that it is inherently good as it lets players to focus on the characters now, not looking for 'level-up'.
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