On the other thread that I started, Canray mentioned houserules for karma to nuyen or in reverse nuyen for karma. I've heard about these rules before but I had never seen a write up for them. From what I understand the idea uses free spirits who act as the transfer and can either trade either one. (Through most free spirits prefer Karma). I was just curious if you dumpshockers knew anything about this or had your own houserules for this?

...Slight derail. Now I imagine the main reasons Free Spirits get paid is to stock pile the money to make some faustian deals with people who needs cash. Woot! New character concept!

I can only speak for myself.
I got the idea from hereos of might and magic, whenever you found treasure you could choose between money and Xp.

The Problem is, there are three ways to go at this problem:
First: Standart rate. Give and Take is the same amount.

Second: You get less money for your Karma, than you have to pay for the Karma.
I like that idea, because it somehow kind of simulates an economie. A spirit will buy from the lowest source but he will only give if he can get more Karma with the money you give him.
Positiv side effect: Playing together pays off, as a group. Giving the Sam your money increases the resources of the group, but lowers yours. Nice touch of game theory. (Is it more important for the players that their character is "good" or is it more important to "beat the GM"...

I used this in a character concept. I took a Contact for a free spirit that operated as kind of a Magical Fixer who dabbles as a sort of shadow-mentor for the arcane and mystical characters who can earn his attention or favor. Like, oh, teaching useful metamagics (in which case, the karma is paid directly to HIM, which he really wants because he's a free spirit), or facilitating the trade of karma in tutor-sessions for various things (like helping a mage bind a new focus quickly, which normally takes a lot of karma.) the character was a sort of starving-artist magician with a very close ally spirit, almost being taken advantage of - a source of karma to feed to her own spirit and learn new spells with basically kept her from climbing out of the starving-artist financial hole.

Its a cool concept, if the GM okays it. The problem is the exchange rate, as it has the potential to unbalance things.
In the current game I'm in, we allow Karma to Cash at the usual rate of 1:2500. Its an option for the street sams and the hackers, who rely more on gear, and it represents finding a windfall or a deal on the gear you want.
In the same game, we did NOT allow cash to karma until very recently (its running on two years now). The current exchange rate on that is 100,000 nuyen: 1 karma. Its very expensive, and basically is so high to keep the rarity of magical goods and enchanted artifacts really high.
Worth noting, players occasionally got extra karma points for really awesome roleplaying moments as a pat on the back, and so it ended up making a bit of a difference when someone wanted to, say, but a new drone, but also had to pay for rent.

Another game I've seen here on dumpshock had a sort of cash-to-karma-and-back-again minigame. Basically, when rewards were totaled and tallied at the end of a mission or session, karma/cash trading was allowed both ways. BUT the exchange rate was set by the proportion of the rewards (money/karma), with a price floor that it can't go below 1:2500.(fairly sure it was based on total awards, not individual split) This means the exchange rate changed as the game progressed, and had the effect of making a sort of stock-exchange mini game, where players could wait to buy things, try to predict what it was going to be like if they survived, and come out a bit ahead if they predicted it right.

A concept I would like to play around with testing is handing out rewards ONLY in karma, but allowing exchanges, and seeing how fair it keeps the archetypes.



Other than that, I have a bit of feedback on the whole thing.
Karma To Cash is a fantastic option, and there is really no harm in including it. It might even be a better idea to up the cash you get out of it, as it helps even the playing field when the sammy is starting to think about getting alpha or beta ware. (a mage needs 5 karma = 12500 to get a really good new toy, but the non-magic classes new toys are often 10-20k or more, multiplied by 2 or 4. Software and skillwares are rather expensive too).

Cash to Karma, however, is the potentially broken one. Game goes on for a while, team earns 20k each for a big job, mage has a few karma lying around, deciding if he wants a new spell or whatever, AND the karma for surviving the mission. Transfers it all to karma, and boom, gets an initiation or a metamagic, and experiences a large jump in power. That's kind of what you want to avoid. That being said, some kind of 'magical lifestyle' option for the mages to help give some amount of money to learn new spells or get an extra point or two so they can initiate is a good thing.

If you're allowing converting of any sort, the best thing you can do is re-evaluate the exchange rate as the campaign progresses. As people start to initiate, and submerge, and buy higher grade ware and get paid more, the default transfer rate starts not to cut it, and its starts to not be a really useful tool. (compare the cost of alpha move-by-wire rating 1, and an adept buying metamagics/power points using the optional rules for that to get improved reflexes, and you will see what I mean).
And you will also start considering basing run rewards and payouts based around this option you've provided, as a way to cut down the power creep you have introduced, and more bookkeeping is always a hastle.
Also, whether or not you are using 4th or anniversary edition karma rewards makes a -huge- difference.


If you are including the option on your game, or are looking at doing so, I would suggest trying:
Start with 1:2500, convert to cash only, and see what people do with it. Trial houserule
OR
Cash to karma: 4000 nuyen : 1 karma. Goes both ways. But, consider imposing a conversion limit based on lifestyle ratings, per month. (0 for street, 1 for squatter, 2 for low, 3 for middle. Start doubling at high and luxury, and consider lessening the restrictions if playing with anniversary costs.)

My group uses a 5000 Nuyen to 1 Karma Ratio, it works well for our group

It is a good ratio, if you do not throw a million bucks out for the players to get deltaware. 200 Karma is much... Very much.

This is what i was originally going to suggest

Wasn't that the official going rate in SR3?

I use the rule. But i have floating ratios. You will always get "screwed" by the gm (me). If you are rich, and earned much the last run you need to pay HUGE amounts, if you are rolling in karma you can get just a paltry sum.

I offer it just after i give out karma and/or go into downtime. Usually only the mages/adepts go for it, though.

Why?

My group just goes, "DEAR GOD NO! Alice Cooper is not getting a piece of my soul!!!" "He's a good family man now, with Christian values. Who cuts his head off and sings Shock Rock Songs." "EXACTLY!"

With the value suggested, in "a relatively down-scale campaign", you could buy a Alpha-grade Datajack for about the same amount of Karma than the first grade of Initiation. In "a more up-scale campaign", Alpha-grade Wired Reflexes (1) would cost the same as 4 to 8 grades of Initiation (depending if the mage belongs to a group and has ordeals), and by the time you can buy Delta-grade Move-by-wire (4) the mage in your group could be near his 100th Initiation grade.

In my own games, I've never had a player try to get money for Karma, but they have often wanted to offload Karma for money. Most often, we explain this as they've donated to helpful organizations and such, and it earns them some favor in the universe, hence the Karma reward. Keeps the players from becoming too evil and helps keep them involved in the world. The rate is usually 5000¥:1 Karma, but sometimes less, sometimes more. Depends on how slow/fast we want Karma to arrive in our games.

Maybe it's the munchkin in me but all I can think of when it comes to buying karma is runners doing their own jobs like knocking off any 18-wheeler that rolls near them like a crack-head looking to get their next fix.

And the bad thing about that is?

Don't mess with truck drivers. Drone Trucks are even meaner, and aren't intimidated with a Predator in the optics.

We've knocked off enough cargo transports that it's gotten too easy. The hard part was the get away. Luckily our players are funding a go-gang.

We go this way: you can trade one point of karma for 2500 or 5000 for 1 point of karma.
You can't convert this way more than twice per mission.
And theoretically we used in-game explanations, like finding a credstick on the floor with the money, or spending money and time helping people to explaind these things.

'Theoretically' my credstick! The Karma that was bought with money was more like hooding Runs that happened, but weren't interesting enough to have 'screen time'. We were on a tight time budget at the time to be worthy of screen time, and the money bought with karma was routine, but not challenging, side jobs, like courier, bouncing at a club or cracking smallcode for sale.

The extra Karma even made into street cred calculations.

I go by the Orichalcum scale. Buying 1 karma costs 50,000 nuyen. (88,000 nuyen back in 3rd edition.)

In our games we borrowed from an old rule about enchanting with orichalcum. Each unit of orichalcum could reduce the karma required to enchant an item by 1 karma. In SR3 1 unit of orichalcum was worth 88,000 nuyen, and in SR4 1 unit of orichalcum is worth 50,000 nuyen.

The only way to stop Adepts and Magicians from leaving the mundanes in the dust is to make Karma purchases that expensive.

Think of it this way. How much money would a mundane runner spend to get a 7th point of Essense? There is no cap for Magic that can't be raised with initiation. Sure mundanes have higher grades of Cyberware and Bioware, but once you get to Beta and Delta you're done.

Even in a game entirely made of mundanes, you get the problem of players cashing in all their money for Karma, then raising their Attributes and Skills to maximum for a fraction of the cost of getting Cyberware and Bioware that do almost as good. Now they are stronger, faster, more skilled... and don't get hassled at security checkpoints trying to explain their illegal Cyberware.

- Umbra

@Umbra

So after your calculations it would be 50.000 x 35= 1750000.

(On the other Hand saving 1 Karma with orichalcum (Binding foci, Quickening spells etc.) would be a hell of a deal! You would not buy it, of course. Just produce it and the radical gold...)

None of the cyber that raises any attributes are illegal, save the exception of higher rating MBW and suprathyroid gland.
The rest is either restricted or free.

Further to this, you could cash-to-karma during chargen by buying spell points. It had a limit of 50 points / karma but that was no problem if you started with Resources A. It was a much more favourable cost ratio than saving chargen money at the end of chargen and then performing cash-to-karma. It helped a mage accumulate the karma needed for a familiar far earlier (at significant cost, of course, but if it fit the character concept that's worth paying).

Do / did you allow karma acquired via cash-to-karma count toward the karma pool (at the normal ratio depending on whether you're human or meta)?

Nope. Your group doesn't benefit from your charity work.

Was that in response to my question? If so, I don't understand. Your group doesn't benefit from your karma pool in any way anyway, unless you use it to succeed / survive and they are depending on you doing so.

So I'm still curious how others have run this: Do / did you allow karma acquired via cash-to-karma to count toward the karma pool?

Sorry. No, in our group, players exchanging cash for karma only got the karma for themselves. The karma pool was derived from karma earned through the normal course of gameplay. The justification is that the karma you gain from your cash sacrifice is yours and yours alone.

All this I completely agree with.

When I said "the karma pool" I was referring to the core book RAW mechanic. From what you wrote above, it looks like your group uses this core terminology to refer to a house-rule concept. I was unaware of your house-rule and the label you are using for it.

All that being said, does / did anyone (else) allow karma acquired via cash-to-karma to count toward the standard Karma Pool of the character spending the cash? Or do / did you just apply it to the Good Karma total waiting to be spent on character improvement?

Ohhhhhhh crud. Yeah, so I'm misremembering the point of the Pool. I'd forgotten that good karma was your "experience points" and Karma Pool was more like Edge.

So yeah, cash for karma -> good karma only. Sorry about the confusion. I do remember a Group Karma Pool, but that may have been for NPC's.

I generally don't allow cash for karma. I do allow the reverse though: karma for cash.

No, Group-Karma was for Players.

So you prefer the magicians getting stronger way faster and the mundanes not having a similar possibility?

I don't have this problem, so no. In twenty plus years I don't think I've ever had that problem. I am not saying it is impossible-just that it has never happened at my table.

So far I'm using the same conversion scale as during chargen: 2500 : 1 either way. SO FAR it hasn't caused any problems - I can still piss off the mage .

@Brainpiercing7.62mm
This is a very nice ratio... I can't imagine it will work later on...

Yeh, we'll see. We're advancing VERY slowly right now, and I had half a mind to just give ONLY cash in the future, that way everyone can make their own priorities. Cash rewards would go up a bit.

We had that thing in the beginning and it went horribly wrong.
We played with the *3 attribute improvement back then and 2500=1Karma.
You can guess where the mages ended up. It took a little while until i was realizing that everything which our group could do, the mage could emulate in some way or even do better plus the magic is just for awakened bonus. The only saving grace for my rigger was that the mage was a nahuatl who didnt care at all for technology.
But i was a horrible rigger back there starting with r3 programs two Kanmushis and a Dobermann and no ware except cybereyes.
Thats how it all started, damn i fucked up every oh so little hacking attempt in the first four runs or so .. heh

Ok, seriously, sounds like a GM problem.

Granted, in my game we're playing an all-magic group, which means that all the adepts need the karma for initiations buying magic attribute, too, and only the hacker needs lots of cash for new toys.