So, I'm getting a bit tired of players either
a) saving everything they make for new cyber or
b) roleplaying properly and using it on lifestyle and such and getting punished for it balancewise compared to those that chose a).

So I'm thinking of after each payout, players can allocate par of their money for Fun

Fun <50%: -1 karma
Fun 50%: +/-0 karma
Fun 80%: +1 karma

Fun money can be spend on
- lifestyle, bars, vacations, investments (I want players to live like real people, and flesh out their characters with enjoying themselves, or saving money for the future, or whatever their dreams and desires are)
- replacements (this is to give the players the option to wreck or sacrifice their stuff or get rid off evidence on runs without getting punished for it)
- consumables (ammo, missiles, etc. - that's also fun!)

I'd increase payments to reflect this new scheme.

It also gives cash-starved players an option to trade karma for cash, and vice versa.

Ideally I'd want a sliding scale, so bigger payments required larger proportions allocated for fun. This would be so I didn't have to railroad players away from big payoffs - it would be fun to let the players get away with doublecrossing the Johnson and making millions on it, without upsetting the power level of the campaign.

Anyone have any experience with something like this, or have an alternative solution?

Simple solultion: Tie Player Happyness to Edge Refreshment.

After the run, did you go out, get a few drinks with friends, and have fun? Sweet, have a point of edge back. Take a weeklong cruise to wind down? Have it all back, and a bonus one. That kind of thing.

Now your powergamers have a reason to play like real people.

Uhm... isn't lifestyle covered by... lifestyle...?

I agree with Udoshi, that's how I do it in my games.

Other ways that could be interesting:
- Explain to your players that each run can be the last one and that most runners will spend most of their money to have fun while they're still alive.
- Have the PC roll a willpower*2 test at the end of each run (with negative modifiers if it was, for example, difficult or stressful) and have a table showing how much (in %) the PC will spend for fun.
- (borrowed from Nath:) Force the players to have a "runner lifestyle". The runner lifestyle is luxury for as long as possible, then high, middle, low and so on.

Psh. 'Fun'. God forbid they spend their money on gear.

..or paying their Debt's (charc's w/ In-Debt Quality)
..well..it is Fun walking w/ your legs, not being somewhere in the dark alley bleeding after visit of loan sharks friends..

Mm, but what happens when a player plays someone particularly devoted to their job? Where, for instance, a new gun is their fun?

It's not a bad idea, and I like some of the suggestions, but as with all things it doesn't cover every situation. I'd say make it apparent that Roleplaying will net you more Karma and possibly new contacts when you make friends, and people will see a good reason to play things out.

I don't want them spending less money on gear. I want to increase payments but more or less force them to spend the increase on roleplaying stuff (and for the players already doing that, they'll get more money to spend on gear).

Tthe problem I see here is that players can trade a solely short-term punishment of no Edge refreshed for the next run for the longterm benefit of more implants.

I also prefer an actual mechanic, rather than having them guess at what I'm satisfied with. Do you have some set numbers for your system, or do you just make a judgement call based on their downtime activities?

Well yes, but there can still be some flavor to it - and you still have people living on Low lifestyle to save money for implants.

Emphasis mine.

Doesn't your point right there conflict with trying to force people to not save money for new cyberware? Because I certainly know as a shadowrunner cyberware would be both the dream and desire and a form of investment, investing in making myself a better shadowrunner.

Things like going out to bars, etc. is covered by the Entertainment portion of everyone's Lifestyle. Unless you have a group of squatters they're already paying for the things you want them to pay for. How many thousands of dollars a month do real people spend on bars and whatever anyway? I know I certainly don't spend 80%+ of my income on "fun".

Which kind of real people? After a tough exercise, all I want to do is to lie in bed and sleep till it is time for dinner. Some guys I know unwind reading in a library.

I guess I'm lucky. My players always upgraded their lifestyle as soon as possible after I started describing the LOW lifestyle their characters had in detail. Rationed water and power, the neighborhood, gangs in the vicinity... they couldn't wait to get paid to get the hell out of those holes!

What if their versions of fun is heavy cybernetic bodymods and gunshows?

What i would find interesting would be a seperate currency for implants, weapons and all the other potentially game-changing stuff we dont want our runners to have too much of too soon. Lets call it CrunchNuyen (CN) for now.

With such a system, the gamemaster could differentiate between CN and classic Nuyen (Y). So if he wanted his players to actually get better we would pay them with more CN, and if he wanted them to have some fun just give them Nuyen to toss around.

Now what we need of course is an ingame justification for this. To me it seems that most of the game-changing stuff is illegal in nature. So why not say that black markets did indeed invent another currency to circumvent all the hassle involved with nuyen (banks can track them etc..).

The only thing left to deal with would be people exchanging CN for Y, something we of course do not want. Any Ideas to prevent this, or general comments about this suggestion?

My general rule as a GM is to never force a player to do anything. Entice them.

EDIT:



Corp Scrip does that just fine, depending on the Corp in question.

If you look at what Fun covers, it is almost everything real people spend their money on - housing, vacation, cars, furniture, pension, clothes, etc. Once people have their education out the way, people don't spend much money on improving their work ability anymore.

I'll contest that statement: a good many people get used to their work, eventually taking pride in it. Especially those in the security sector, or those who are in the criminal element. Further, for the criminal elements such as Shadowrunners, it is a matter of both fun and survival. Better guns mean better potential payout, means more money to drag yourself out of the barrens.

So... its what the players paid for with the lifestyle cost.

This is exactly what I'm trying to do. But instead of actual currencies, I'm enforcing a "karma tax" mechanic on CN.

IIRC in GURPS Cyberpunk, even after chargen you couldn't just pay to have implants installed, you had to pay "experience points" (can't remember the actual name) for them. The balance reasoning for this is obvious, though it does stretch believability a little.

More or less, yes. What I'm trying to avoid is giving the powerplayer an advantage in implants and gear because he's living a Low lifestyle while another team member lives on High lifestyle because that fits his character.

Note I'm also planning on letting Fun money be used on wrecked gear, expensive consumables like missiles, etc. Giving players money to burn on runs, rather than having them focused on saving money for use on character improvement, seems like a good idea (even though that is often handled by the Johnson paying for such expenses).

Another way to check whether or not they have an advantage is to see what their lifestyle security is like. Most Low will have awful security. If you give them reasons to want higher lifestyles, they'll gladly pay for it.

WEAPONS ARE FUN.

But yeah: I let them only regenerate edge when they take some time off, chill with some friends or go to vacation. If they keep on researching, get implants, or just do one run after another... they will run out. I pretty much ORDER them to take two days off after a horrible "adventure".

But getting them to get a high lifestyle is hard. Some players do, because they like their characters to have it... others.., Well let's say: We had once a guy where we joked that he is either polishing his guns or sleeping with his guns in his hands in a coffin.. WAITING... LURKING... to get a call from a fixer or the others.

Low Lifestyle should suck so make it suck.

Have them get home after a long run, to find their 'home' has been gutted by thiefs/gangs.
Lets say they went to logos for 2 months, have them come home to someone else living in their home.

If it's a hacker, whose hacking from home. Roll his necessities lifestyle dice. Maybe on 0 hits he loses power in the middle of the run. On a glitch he loses power for X # of rounds, on a crit glitch he loses power for X hours?

He comes home and his stash of ammo is gone.

There's tons of options, for making low/squat/no suck.

What you can do is something like:

Security Lifestyle=threshhold on a crime roll.
Your crime roll could be: 6-zone rating

so if you have a low lifestyle in the barrens.
You have 6 dice Threshhold 2, that's almost a guarantee

Z-Zone/Barrens: 0
minimum security: 1
Low Security: 2
Medium Security: 3
High Security: 4
Luxury Security: 5

And yes, that means that a Luxury lifestyle in a Luxury Zone would be 1 dice with a threshold of 6.
This seems fair to me, because basically they should never be the victims of random crime.

Doesn't really work that way, Commlinks run on internal power. But instead of power outage maybe there are not enough nodes in his signal vicinity to support ultrahigh bandwidth and he's seriously slowed down by the lag?

Yes maybe he gets reaction penalties?
His effective response is dropped by 1/2/3 for X time.
Maybe on a crit glitch he loses matrix access completely for a certain amount of time.

Course, he could just buy a satellite link up, but that's a different issue.

Sounds about right.

The trouble with lifestyle is that you could always use the the companion's advanced lifestyle rules to get a cheap lifestyle without the security issues by lowering the entertainment rating and raising the security rating.

To a point. They do have minimum and maximum levels based on location and necessities, as I recall.

There's still an issue of living in a security Zone.

You're not going to find entertainment 0 or 1 lifestyles in a Medium or High Zone.

A low lifestyle would be:
10 points 2 in every category
Comforts: 2
necessities: 2
entertainment: 2
Security: 2
Neighborhood: 2

You don't have a ton of leeway to change it.
you can drop entertainment by 1 point to get a 3 security.
But that still means there's 4 dice for a 3 threshold. Is it going to happen every session? no.
Is it going to happen every once in a while? Yes.

tie their matrix access to their entertainment lifestyle.
use the limitations suggestion.
Your Entertainment and Security can be max comforts + 2
Your Comforts/security/entertainment/necessities must be at least neighborhood - 2

Combine that with giving them edge recover penalties based on their entertainment lifestyle.
Or maybe a combination of entertainment/comforts.

I agree with the carrot and the stick approach to player motivation. My current team is a B+ core of runners with 180 karma or so each. I have an ork named monkey that lives in a crappy C neighborhood but pays for a medium-high level life style by paying off the gangs, and having the whole floor to himself. His lifestyle expenses are 7500 or so. I'm ok with that.
I Have played with teams in Missions that all live together in a low lifestyle and that is crazy.
So 6 middle aged folks with years of training and paychecks that run 5k a week all live in a two bedroom 4th floor walk up with no security. So that would be like my college MBA friends and I all living together in my college apartment when I have gotten my 70 k a year job. No cable, and shop at food banks for barely legal food.

If they have lots of thousand dollar gear and live with a deadbolt and a lousy wooden door between a BTL head and 20k worth of illegal stuff.

Also if you use the advanced medicine rules from augmentation having a low lifestyle makes it harder to heal from damage. I also use the roll just body not body X2 for healing when not under doctors care. So skimping on lifestyle makes you not heal so well between runs.

My larger issue is getting folks to take time off. You were on a high stress run for 3 weeks and you come home and spend the next 2 weeks working on heavy weapons training. Anyone else have this problem?

Some people blow off stress by blowing shit up.

I come home from work, stressed as hell, and i go do an hour of Kung Fu Practice every day.

You're telling me two weeks of blowing stuff up in the middle of nowhere with a fridge full of beer and food and about a metric ton of ammunition to expend isn't a vacation?

That's a slice of Nirvana right there.

I was going to say that was a terrible example but I see your point when I realized it's just not true for any "archtype".

Hackers enjoy hacking, writing a trojan or whatever during downtime will be their fun hobby. Similarly the Mage would enjoy reading about new magical theories the same way a tech enthusiast enjoys reading up on the newest gadget.

It's true. The people who are the best at what they do tend to enjoy it, or it's their job and they continue to train.

As the SWAT example was brought up, LA SWAT spends all of their time training, punctuated by calls for reinforcement. Most other dedicated SWAT teams are the same way.

As i usually play more mohawk characters, they usually trudge home after having been patched up, grab something highly sedating, like masses of alcohol, then sleep it all off for some days, take a shower, then repeat. then take a shower, go out, buy groceries, watch TV(cartoons, a movie or two, news), talk to some people on the phone, find out if there's something important going on. If not? sleep, take shower, find something to do when boredom sets in or cabin fever.
I usually spend some money on character hobbies or characters money on my own hobbies. Usually while in pre run preparations or while on the run when nothing else has to be done.

Mine go schmoozing. Their contacts are their friends, and they'll go hang out.

My sam would go out to lunch with the team's arms dealer, swapping stories and killing bottles of alcohol, the team sent gifts to their 'Star contact's wedding (along with a promise to stay ten square miles away from the site), cautiously accepted invites from their corporate informants to picnics and other company outings as 'contractors', and went out drag racing with their mechanics.

The team could very easily cool off after a run and have fun, but still have time to practice, train, and spend karma for a job well done.

All that comment about CrunchNuyen makes me think about is... WuxBux and Corpscrip. A good way to force people to 'spend' on 'useless things' is to..... pay them a lot of cash, that can only be spent on certain corp property. Unless they have a -really good- fake sin and licenses, they're unlikely to be able to use those WuxBux/CrunchYen to buy any restricted gear (such as silencers) from that corps chains, but.... that corp might just have a really nice spa or nightclub in town. They almost certainly have access to a hospital, which means access to betaware and unrestricted implants, if anyone needs simple stuff like datajacks, cybereyes, or your face wants some biosculpting.

Whoo! Back from work, and its two pages already! Heck yeah.

The kind of people who, after a successful run, make more money in a week's worth of prepwork than a part-time wageslave makes in a months work.
I'm assuming that, say, after splitting the fee with the party, a runner is walking off with between 3-5k of profit, minimum.
The point being that, in the world of SR, runners DO make a lot of money in a fairly short timespan. Well, compared to everyone else.




I don't currently, but it seemed like a good idea to mention, so I did. Been thinking about how to flesh it out, and make it work.

Were I to actually USE this in the game I would probably do a few things:

The first would be to straight out rip off World of Darknesses Nature and Demeanor rules. For those that aren't in the know, the system has a Willpower stat for players, that works similiarly to edge. There are various archetypes for Nature/Demeanor which are short personality snippets or guides to how you act around people, from the bleeding heart to the jock asshole. Demeanor represents how you act around other people. Nature is a character's true motivation. Players get a willpower back when they go out of their way to indulge their Nature. My memory's a little fuzzy, but I don't think you get any back for indulging a demeanor.
So I'd steal that mechanic, and ask each player to give me a short summary of their characters primary motivations, file it away, and hand out a single point back if their character goes out of the way to stick to their metaphorical guns. Include a little consideration for their backstory and flaws, and compensate a little for players accomplishing things important to their character, and to the story, such as actually finding a Lost Loved One. I wouldn't actually hold out an entirely different games rulebook to someone and say 'hey, pick these really quick', but the mechanic could/should feel familiar.

The second one would be to make a short table, about the size of the object resistance table, from 1 to...oh, say, three or four, and ending with All. This list would be a table of severity, example of things to do to get X edge back - you know, kind of like the SR4 books have Threshold tables for various things - except for Edge Refreshement. Just a little list of amounts and examples. I'm not entirely sure what I would put at each level, but there are two things I'd do for sure.
The first would be to hand out 1 freebie edge back at the start of each, physical gaming session.(because a single Campaign or Run can stretch out over a few sessions). At the beginning of each new fresh, whole In-character Run/Campaign, everyone would start with a full edge, but keeping in mind that a run includes Prepwork, calling contacts, fleecing people for information, and isn't just hitting the target and getting out - there's other stuff to do as well, and it should take a few days to put together and get in motion.
Secondly, I'd leave room for the GM's touch. If I feel that a Run or situation was particularly stressful, or that a player went out of their way with IC effort or money to unwind, I'd shift the edge recovery up or down by 1 in either direction. For example, the 'always have a low lifestyle and save all money for cyberware' characters people have been complaining about.
Third, I'd explain the Advanced Lifestyle Rules to all my players, and make sure they use them. Because the carrot is better than the stick, and some of the advanced options are -good-, and give players an incentife to move up. When the mage realizes 'holy shit, I can get a house that gives +2 to everything I do in my magical lodge?' they're going to start looking for ways to pay for an lifestyle with an Aspected Domain. Same thing for a hacker/mechanic with Fung Shui.

Fourth, and something I think this thread needs in general to be pointed out is..... You can bill your lifestyle for things. You don't -have- to pay for everything out of pocket. Lifestyle covers more things than just a house, though this really only comes into play at Middle+.
Necessities covers Food/Drink and Clothes. Here's some examples from the book: Middle: Bottled water, occasional real food on special occasions, Mortimer of London/Vashon island stuff that was on sale. High: Includes expensive dairy products such as milk or chocolate, berwick suits, some jewelry, and even a Zoe suit or too. Luxury, on the other hand, is just ridiculous.
Entertainment covers what you do for fun when you go out. For example, Middle covers CableTV(or the sr equivalent) subscriptions, eating out at chain restaurants, season tickets to sporting events or music concerts, frequent datenights, and an annual vacation such as a 5-day cruise, as well as minor cosmetic surgery like tummytucks and nosejobs. High nets you exclusive clubs, front-row seats, weekend hops to ski resorts, and gene therapy now and again. Luxury level is, frankly, ridiculous - if you can afford it.
Its also worth noting that Comforts nets you free house drones, and any lifestyle worth 20 points or more gets a free, plain, onmodded Car of some sort. 25LP+ gets you two cars and a chauffer for them.
More or less, with the Advanced Lifestyles, Low doesn't get you crap, the benefits start to kick in at High, and middle has a little leeway either way.

The most compelling reason to get a Good lifestyle is.... because you can bill your lifestyle for stuff.
You> Hey, i've got an actual Sin, and I'd like to go get some allergen immunization for my moderate pollution allergy with my doctor contact.
GM> Alright, you'll have to make the availability test to set up an appointment, and deal with regular treatments until its done, but sure. How many points is the allergy?
You> Uh. *checking sheet* 15?
GM> Right. At 5 grand times bp, thats... seventy five grand? I don't think you can afford that?
You> Nope. Luxury entertainment. That covers gene therapy and doctors visits...and i've got a Gold Docwagon, which nets gets me ten percent of extended care through docwagon, so.... yeah. I'm good.
GM> Fuck.

The point being, if you have the means to pay for a good lifestyle, you should, so you can stop paying for the menial day to day shit. Thats what lifestyles are -for-.

The thing I need help with is... ideas and input. Were we to make a small list of things to do to get edge back,(you know, small list, little examples, a fairly quick guideline), well, what should go on it? What is worth one edge? Two? How much of a vacation do you need to take to come back completely recharged and ready to work? Some runners head out of town after big jobs to let the heat blow over. How good should that be? Does it need statting?
That kind of thing.

um high lifestyles helps alot on healing checks after getting out the hospital and for non deadly wounds means ya don't have to go to the hospital. Isn't that good enough? heck if I play a combat type then there is no way I'll have anything less than high.

Holy explosive threads Batman!

I'll have to give this a read.

I did something like this for a character of mine, to represent a gambling addiction. I would take half of my money from the run and roll 1d6 with Exploding 6's. Whatever the result came up as I multiplied by 10 and that was the percentage of my money I could keep. Oddly enough (pun) I lost most of it.

So what happened if you got over 100%?

He exploded.

I had characters whose idea of a good time involved a good hotel, lots of alcohol, expensive food and several women of questionable morals. Another thought that balancing the compressor stage and playing with/training their barghest puppies was just a fine way to spend downtime.

Just reward people with High Entertainment lifestyles with extra opportunities for roleplay and gaining new contacts. For example, going to that movie premiere introduces them to Benjamin Bodyguard, who in turn knows all the major entertainment players. Or Sally Suit, VP at Brackhaven Industries. Entertainment includes going out. It also means that when a Johnson wants to meet them at a very posh restaurant, the High Lifestyle guy gets in the door quickly and can schmooze at the bar, while Mr. Low Lifestyle has to sit and cool his heels until called for.

Got beat up and kicked out of the casino for cheating?

People do actually win big, it's just not common. But the casinos would be out of business if everyone always lost.

I suppose it is true that Lifestyle covers Lifestyle, but it does become possible to min/max that out to the point where the player char claims "My char would totally be comfortable with it" when in reality its like living in a sewer, and they're just trying to squeeze that last bit of nuyen 'out of character'.

There are potential options for making this impact the game, but requires mindful approach and knowledge of your own player-group. I think its pretty evident that 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy' and prone to stabhappy behavior. In a way, it could also be said that if you're not spending time (downtime) socializing and such, how can you maintain your personal skills (social skills, etc). Plus things like, "Dude, you've been wearing those same clothes for a week now."

SR (and most games) don't touch on actual things like relationships, so its kinda ez-mode. Meh, I'll have dependents and relationships if I can get a BP value out of it. In reality tho, I have friends (cops) that are very focused on their jobs. Great guys, guys I'd like to have watching my back, but out of 7 of them, 6 of them have terrible personal relationships, 1 avoids having problems cause he older, settled and retired. There is always a cost for focus in one area, if you're not finding a good balance.

So in SR, you don't have to have friends, you can write up your character as blissfully fine being antisocial, solo and living in sewage doesn't bother him, cause, well, its a game, and more power to ya, but on the other hand, I can see it can also strike some players/gms as really odd behavior.

@sabs FYI, everything you suggested is already mentioned in RC. They specifically go over how often you will attempt to get robbed based on neighborhood, and how often that robbery will be successful based on security. They also go over Entertainment being linked to what kind of matrix access you have.

@Voran Yeah, social penalties are one of the most obvious applications of a particularly low lifestyle, even extending to the person's associates. A bad stench might also have the problem of overriding the face's pheromones and improved smell thing, as well as provide the penalty for overwhelming stench. And boy will the stealth type be embarrassed when the guard finds them based on smell.

The problem here is that while low isn't great, it is also quite livable. I mean most college students live somewhere between low and squatter generally.

@smokeskin I like your idea in general. It means that the rigger isn't quite as worried about losing his expensive drone, because he knows that replacing it comes out of a 'replacement equipment fund' of sorts, it means that people might use some of the cool (but highly expensive) nanotech like demolishers to get through a high security door, or cutters or whatever. I'd suggest lowering the percentages somewhat though, or perhaps staging it some. Like maybe every 10% below or above 35% of the run income spent on 'fun' nets or loses a karma. This way you don't have the sammy simply not spending anything and taking a tiny -1 penalty in exchange for an extra 10k profit on the run. Also makes it less of a target (I have to spend at least 50%, but no real point in spending more than 50%) to be hit, and more of a "Lets see how much I spend, and maybe round up to the next bonus."

Perhaps the biggest problem you might have with this is a TM. TMs have very very little in the way of things to spend nuyen on, and could likely happily throw 95% of their income on 'fun' each time. On the other hand, given how much they need karma, this might be a good way to help them out.

Oh, and for all the people saying 'entertainment is part of lifestyle' yes, you're right, but it has it's limits. A low lifestyle only barely lets you go out every once in a while to dive type bars. So maybe after a successful run, instead of dumping money on a better lifestyle, the character goes to a posh bar and really parties it up, thus spending nuyen, since doing so is more than their lifestyle can handle (Unless they don't watch the Trid or go out at all for the next month to recover).