Incontinent?

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I'm really abhorring the number enemy qualities that may exist among the players I'm with. As far as I can tell, so far our enemies involved a powerful person in Shiawase, a conspiracy that involves Saeder-Krupp and the British government (or whatever passes for it these days), and the former partners (runners) of the third member. While the corp enemies are only of 1 incidence, I shudder at the implication of what would happen should all three enemies come up on the incidence chart.

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The bagman that was supposed to deliver your payment never did....

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Why not adjust the enemy? So you have a 13BP / 26 Karma enemy group (which is a group by necessity since an enemy can only go up to 12 BP / 24 Karma). They effectively earned 4 karma and used 10 karma worth of stuff while doing so. As a GM, what I would do is lower the effectiveness of the quality by 14 karma. So if this was a 3 Incidence, 4 Connections group with 110 members (+4), and a spawl-wide area of influence (+2). Let's say during this mission you killed about 40 members lowering them down to 70 members (-2 for 4 karma), and dropped their influence to a district (-1 for 2 karma). Lower their incidence to 1 (-2 4 karma) to represent them recuperating from the beating you gave them and their connections to 2 (-2 for 4 karma) to represent a lowered opinion of them throughout the sprawl. So now, instead of a 13BP / 26 Karma enemy group you have a 1 incidence 2 connections, district group (+1) with 70 members (+2) that's now a 6BP / 12 Karma enemy group.

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So.... the third time the enemy shows up, I kill him with a sucking chest wound. Then I put five bullets into his grey matter. Then I sever his head. Then I feed his body to a wood chipper and bag the remains. Then I feed his head to a wood chipper and bag those remains. Then I cremate the chipped remains of the body and rebag them. Then I cremated the chipped remains of the head and rebag those. Then I break into an abandoned mine and dump the ashes of the body all over the mine. Then I tie a metal weight to the head bag and dump it over the Mariana Trench....

bannockburn: If that's the case, then it's accurate to say that RAW *is* what toturi and I were talking about (specifically so). I don't even *like* RAW, myself, and I would certainly make use of house rules, perhaps exactly like the ones you described.

It basically sounds like you're agreeing with me, though? You talk about factoring in the costs and rewards, which is essentially my position. You're *not* talking about just giving things away for RP. And I am certainly therefore agreeing with you, hehe.

Relevant to this specific discussion of 'is the RAW for In Debt bad?', of course. Not irrelevant in general or anything.

In the end, I agree… but my point is that the book also agrees. The book specifically and repeatedly talks about GM approval at every step, GM discussion with the player, about requiring significant effort to *earn the right* to buy away flaws if it's allowed at all, etc.

Then, we're d'accord
Glad to have clarified our points ^^

How it is paid off is not entirely up to the player. The player only controls how much he sends to the loan shark. The GM still controls the shark's reaction to the payment. You're dealing with shadow lenders. A dropped payment here, a little skimmed off the top there. The lender threatens some action against you if you keep trying to pay ahead on the loan or even denies receiving anything but the interest payment. This is a concept known as corruption. Just because X nuyen goes to someone for some purpose does not mean that X will actually be applied to the purpose.

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Incorrect. You get 30BP and 30k nuyen at chargen for a 45k debt that compounds monthly at 10% and you have to pay at least the interest each month to keep the lender happy. That is all that RAW states. That means the first month you must pay at least 4500 unless you pay it off before the monthly payment comes up. Anything beyond that is GM fiat which basically means the GM tells the player the terms and conditions of the loan as set by the shark which could mean anything. Now, in my mind, the way to handle In Debt is to basically dump a metric crapton of corruption on it so not much more than than the interest payment per month is actually getting paid (in this way In Debt becomes a permanent lifestyle cost modifier). If the runner gets irritated about it, perfect, they can go after the shark and that provides a method to directly apply karma to the quality. So let's say whatever you do is worth 6 karma (which would be 3000 of the quality). Now, instead of owing 45000 you "owe" 40500 and you monthly interest payment is 4050.

I don't think paying ahead should be a valid strategy with these loans and instead it should function as a mandatory monthly cost plus some until you pay off the quality with karma. Perhaps more-so than other qualities, In Debt is quite favorable towards partial buy off with karma. Of course, you'll want to require that at least 1500 per karma of the quality has been paid before permitting the karma being spent to buy it off.

I'm not seeing how anything you said after 'Incorrect' is different from what I said? … I'm not even sure what you said was related to my quote at all, actually. Yes, you've suggested some house-rule additional, non-RAW drawbacks, which is a good idea. It's also not RAW. The mandatory monthly costs is exactly what I suggested with the 'service charge' idea, as well: more agreement, no 'incorrect'. Furthermore, I totally agree that it should be paid off incrementally, perhaps 1 karma (and appropriate cash) at a time.

Not so much incorrect as misleading by not including the interest portion.

Have I suggested a house rule? There are no rules for how NPCs behave beyond what a player can achieve with social skills or any other conflict resolution system (combat, hacking, magic). With all of them, there are no rules regarding how a NPC determines what it will do. An alarm tripped in the building, where's the rules that determine how many or what mooks are sent to respond to it? At what point does determining how NPCs act to a particular stimulus goes from standard GM behavior to house rules?

All I've done is suggested NPC behavior which has an effect that mimics what could be stated as a house rule (to simplify explaining it) without actually creating a house rule.

Oh. I'm sure I talked about the interest several times? In the bit you quoted, I talk about the interest in the last two sentences, same paragraph. I also mentioned it in other posts, and quoted the complete In Debt rules for when toturi asked.

Yes, suggesting various penalties and consequences of the In Debt quality is a house rule. A good one, certainly, but it's not part of the RAW. At most, the RAW says 'someone might come visit' *if* you don't pay the interest (which I've argued is a very small fee). You're right that the GM is free to determine what 'might come visit' means… but only if the PC somehow fails to pay the interest. It's not within the realm of 'non-house-rule interpretation' to declare that In Debt payments are magically lost to corruption, or (as TJ suggests) that the lender can also demand favors, etc. It might be a perfectly good house rule, but there's no reason to claim it's RAW.

I am entirely in favor of house rules, but my argument with toturi is that the RAW is unacceptably imbalanced without at least charging Karma (which is itself RAW).

I've always played In Debt strait. Rather than try and rules lawyer it as free BP, I increase my lifestyle costs by the interest amount and I'm done with it. I never expect to pay off the loan in full during the game.

For my last character I called it a student loan (character was in college).

This is what I did once.


Also for a good example of what happens to in debt characters check the fiction from SR4A on 276. "What goes around comes around"

That said, I like in debt as a concept, but i think they did the costs wrong. The money you get isn't the problem, its the BP you get back with it that is.
The way it works now, you adjust the BP amount, you get more money and more BP back.
Instead, it should have a static BP value for a variable amount of cash, and adjusting BP value would change interest rates.

-At 5BP you get 5-30k and have to pay back +50% + 10% interest.

-at 10BP you had some rocky times in the past and missed a few payments. you should take at least 15k but now you owe +100% and at 15% interest.

-at 15BP you were at rock bottom for a while and missed a lot of payments (perhaps while you were in prison?). You would have to take it at full 30k (anything less would be too easy to payoff for 15BP) but now you owe +200% and are at 20% interest. your loan shark is no longer waiting for monthly payments and instead you come home from your last job finally able to buy some good food and find him sitting in your living room ready to garnish your earnings. Looks like your eating ramen again. They constantly have jobs they expect you to do for them because if you don't you'll have to pay them back in full right now and if you can't...maybe they'll take it in the form of your secondhand ware....

Thats as high as i would take it but if you wanted to go to 20BP, next step up would require your character to be an actual slave to someone. All earnings go straight to them, they track you at all times with implanted transponders, and probably a cranial bomb. You do all their dirty work.

*edited formatting because it was hard to read

Definitely qualifies as "usually an underworld syndicate, large gang or corporation", even today.
Totally. Your suggested figures and effects sound very cool.

Yera, what I'm pointing out is that NPC behavior is GM fiat outside a few areas. Either NPCs are all mindless idiots who have no reason to move or eat if or they are intelligent and act based on their motives. The question is which is truly RAW? The problem with the latter being RAW is that it can only be so through some sort of GM fiat declaration in the RAW.

Ultimately, if the NPCs have motives by GM fiat then any effect which is brought about due to the actions of NPCs must also be considered RAW.

I agree, StealthSigma, but when the effects of something are literally given, it's rude to the players to just make up extra stuff. They can't anticipate what's going on in such a situation, and that's not really fair for them. You wouldn't randomly declare that the muscle toner they bought also gives them crippling cramps (like SR3 overstress rules) just because that character is being too good at Agility tests. Cramps aren't listed in the effects, and the player would be totally confused.

Instead, you make the *house rule* and tell them all ahead of time. Then they know, and everything's groovy.

It provides a perfect hook for a job. After having paid off the 45000 plus any accrued interest your loan shark comes back asking for his payment. Shadowrun is a dystopic setting after all. You shouldn't be surprised if someone is screwing you over for their own gain. That's basically what you do as a runner. You're getting paid to screw someone else over.

Again, definitely yes. It's just outside of the RAW and basic social contract of 'the rules provide a predictable system for everyone' WRT In Debt specifically. Even in SR, the players all have a sense of what kinds of unexpected twists are possible. The loan shark can totally try to extort more money out of you, because that's something that would happen in SR. But that could happen with In Debt or not; the players wouldn't (RAW) have the expectation of it happening because they took that quality. If they took Extravagant Eyes, for example, they *could* expect something pretty crazy, like a nutball collector wants to take their freaking eyes (!)… but they wouldn't expect that their eyes suddenly lose the ability to see color cuz the GM said so.

Sadly, the victim was only made to look like the enemy, and was sent out to engagne the characters while the enemy did somehting else behind the scenes. Now that they think he is finally and truly dead, he has unlimited time/access to do anything he wants to the Characters, becasue they think they have finally won.

See... Not that hard after all...

I have done this a time or two myself. Works out pretty well, in fact.

Or even if you were sure it was the right guy, GM Hand of god comes in and your killing shot sucking chest wound doesn't kill him, the bullet is mostly stopped by the <deus ex machina> in his shirt pocket, perhaps its a thermal smoke grenade. The pain makes him drop the HE grenade that was in his hand and it scatters forward while he stumbles back through a doorway and collapses the ceiling between you.

Or after you get a "killing shot" you get interrupted and are delayed getting any closer, then a Doc wagon rapid reaction force appears and spirits him away where they are able to resuscitate him.

You magnificent bastard.

Disclaimer Missing.

Heh... That was entertaining, but I have to agree with Stahlseele... You forgot the discalimer.

They did you a favor, loaning you money that's "off the grid". Not only do they want their money back - with interest - but they might just come around for "favors" in return. And endless stream of them.

That's how organised crime WORKS their money-lending operations.






... including the BP of learning the spell, and the opportunity cost of taking up space on the limited list of starting spells.






I'm considering making it "you owe double", and then charging 20% monthly interest. And then, the player would be near-constantly harrassed by people "reminding" her not to be late with the next payment. And that's if she never misses a payment. If she ever, ever slips by JUST ONE DAY? Now, the screws really get turned.

You do NOT want to be in debt to the mob/yakuza/etc.






... and in a delta-grade black-bag medical clinic somewhere, his clone wakes up, having just finished having all your original enemy's memories fed into him via simsense.

Can a Spirit Emerge?
The Rules say, that nothing with a Magic Attribute can have the Resonance/Dissonance Attribute . .
But strictly RAW/technically speaking, Spirits don't HAVE the Magic-Attribute right? They have Force . .

And now for the coup the grace: Possessing a materialized emerged spirit!

Check again.

http://i46.tinypic.com/20sx8xh.png

That may be how OC works their money lending operations IRL. But the Quality does not state that they come around for an endless stream of "favors" in return, thus the debtor even if it is a criminal syndicate or a large gang or a corporation does no such thing.

If indeed they do and you paid them credit in full already, then they owe you, with interest. Presumably with the same interest rate they charged you in the first place. Because you did them a favor, paying them back money that's off the grid.

And who do you think is more likely to collect "over and above the debtor's protests" ... a mafia capo, or a single shadowrunner?

And more, who do you think the capo is going to believe: his own lieutenant (who has the books to "prove" the debt is still owed), or some deadbeat "shadowrunner" who was so hard up for cash he had to borrow in the first place?

Yeah. About what I thought.

...

If you take the In Debt quality, in my games? You've voluntarily chosen to do business with an organisation which by it's very nature is dishonest, untrustworthy, and whose "typical behaviors" include theft, embezzlement, fraud, graft, extortion, and other "make someone pay us money whether they want to or not" pastimes. CAVEAT EMPTOR.

The single shadowrunner.

And who do you think the capo is going to believe: his own loser lieutenant (who had to cook the books to "prove" the debt is still owed and whose books show such tampering), or some cutting edge shadowrunner who was smart enough to make the capo a small "repayment" incidentally similar to the amount that said lieutanant is claiming he did not embezzle?

Yeah. About what I thought.

If you take the In Debt quality, in my games? An organisation who may or may not be more able to collect from you than you from them has chosen to do business with an extremely competent, highly expert professional who routinely come out ahead of similar organisations as themselves. CAVEAT EMPTOR indeed.

... one man, no matter how nice his toys, against an entire criminal organisation?

The shadowrunner loses. Every time.

It depends on how good the shadowrunner is.

A really good shadowrunner should win most of the time.

FTFY

Unless your shadowrunner's name is Kane, or Fastjack? No, no he shouldn't.

A PC Shadowrunner is supposed to be heroic in nature (I don't mean goody goody two shoes.. I mean he is the one with the wallet that says BAMF). So yes, in the end the Shadowrunner will come out ahead of a Capo's crooked crony.. figuratively and quite possibly literally.

If you think the PCs are heroic and should eventually prevail against all odds ... then quite simply, you don't understand the genre.

In cyberpunk, the heroes rarely really win in the long run, and even when they do, the victories tend to be pyrrhic, have limited impact, or are similarly made questionable.

Obligatory Disclaimer: the following links lead to TvTropes, which has been known to devour people's brains. Consider yourself warned. ^_^

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CyberPunk

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CyberpunkTropes

A tiny portion of arctypes. However, the system itself presents mathemetics to the opposite (multiple attacker/defend against multiple attack rule). Rather, shadowrun lends itself to guerrilla tactics every time. One thing all guerrilla wars have in common is that the little guys do not wipe out the big guys, ever. It's a game of survival, denial, and psychology, about making it not worth fighting against. Shadowrun teams don't bring down the larger groups unless the GM orchestrates it for effect.

Shadowrunners, instead, depose the leader (to be replaced by another), destabilize control, deny resources, create acts of God, and otherwise work to make something less profitable or more profitable to effect some sort of change.

Shadowrunners don't play chicken with a rhino. They ride it.

Sorry, but thats getting really silly. The Rules say, you have to pay karma, if you want to reduce your dept. End of line.

So, please do not go around what the quality says, if you just ignore RAW anyway. That's just silly.

Um, do you mean debt? Because actually, they do not say. Not one way, nor the other. It is another case of implied handling, and comes down to which way the GM sways. Most of this discussing is disagreeing with a personal take on the implication, and it's relative fairness.

Here is the bottom line:
If it costs NO karma to buy off:
players borrow y=(5000 x d), and must pay P=(1.5y + .1P_1 x time)
because you get an extra 5000, lets call it 6 bp per rating, and assume exponential payoff rate due to higher interest (as credit card people do) and simplify this ESTIMATION.
You get 6 BP for 9,000¥ in game, 12 for 21,000¥, 18BP for 40,500¥, up to 36BP (thats 30 for quality, and 6 for the 30k) for 189,000¥
This is a ROUGH estimate.

Now, if you take the other extreme: it costs karma AND payoff, then it's 189,000¥ AND 60 karma to pay off the largest one. I personally would then never take it. This becomes like my previous post: only taken when one just HAS to have more than 300,000¥ and is willing to sell his soul.

One possible middle ground: pay off the 10% per month until you buy it off with karma (since it ALSO does not say you have to pay it off, the math and reasoning is squarely up to the GM)
6 BP for 1,500¥ + 10 karma in game, 12 for 6,000¥ + 20 karma, 18BP for 13,500¥ + 30 karma, up to 36BP (thats 30 for quality, and 6 for the 30k) for 54,000¥ + 60 karma
This assumes 2 months of paying debt per 10 karma you spend on this, and no middling buy downs. All or nothing.

Personally, the last one would be my approach.

By RAW, you have to pay karme for EVERY negative quality you want to remove. If you only have to pay back the money, this would be the ideal neg. quality for technomancers, mages and adepts - it gives you plenty of bp/karma, you do not have to wast bp/karma at chargen for money, and you just have to pay money afterwards.

The rules say you have to pay karma if you want to buy off your Negative Quality of which In Debt is one of. But the RAW of In Debt also includes a repayment method.

If people want to house rule/interpret in their own way, then I will house rule in the above manner. You find this house rule silly? To me, house rules are nearly always silly.

@toturi

For every negative quality there is a way of overcoming it. And since Karma is non existant in any solution (because it is an OOC resource)....
Enemy: Kill him.
Dependant: Set up trust found. (AKA buy permanent lifestyle)
Blindness: Get Cybereyes or cloned eyes.

Sure, but you also have to pay karma to remove the neg. quality - if you don't:

Enemy: now his son/brother/organization/etc. is now your enemy
Dependent: having a permanent lifestyle does not help at all, because:

A permanent lifestyle does not give you more free time etc.
Blindness: The doc gets a critical glitch while operating, destroing the new set of eyes.

@NiL_FisK_Urd
My point was, that if you start arguing that you can undo negative qualities without paying karma, you can arguee that way for all (or nearly all).

Ok, sry - than i misunderstood you - and you are completely right ^^

I'll just leave this here

Why is this relevant, you (and the mods) might ask?

Well, it just seems like a recent shining example of two sides disagreeing for 190+ pages, when they should have just agreed to disagree at page 2.

I think that makes it relevant here...

Opportunity cost.

Enemy: As strange as this sounds, killing him denies the character advantages in the forms of additional karma awarded that he otherwise would not gain when encountering the enemy.
Dependent: Nuyen. That's all that needs to be said. At 50,000 for squatter (and who would buy that?), 200,000 for low, 500,000 for medium, 1,000,000 for high, and 10,000,000 for luxury buying that permanent lifestyle means you're not spending a significant amount of your earnings on goodies to make you better. It also doesn't get rid of the nuisance factor of your dependent.
Blindness: IIRC, you can't just grab standard grade cybereyes and cure blindness. I was under the impression that you need beta or delta grade and going there you then have to spend more nuyen and time to find someone who can do it to overcome it.

The problem with In Debt is that its opportunity cost has always been too low if existent and hence why it's been a no brainer to take it. You take that quality at 30BP and that gives you 180,000 to work with. What's the opportunity cost of it? That mostly depends on what your first big purchase would have been had you not taken the debt. Let's say you wanted enhanced articulation (40,000) but you only have 10,000 nuyen that you can spend so you take a 30,000 debt to acquire it. So what's the cost of doing it?

Practically nothing.

If you had waited to buy Enhanced Articulation, you would have had to pay 40,000 later but you would be down 28 BP in character generation from not taking the quality. Instead you would need to have some other sum of NQs to meet 30BP or have severely reduced what was on your character to compensate.

Buying it now means you gain 28BP that you didn't need to get through worse NQs. You still end up having to pay that 40,000 plus an extra 5,000 and some change based on how much interest accrues.

BLINDNESS is Neurological and can't be cured by ANY kind of Ware. Not Cyber, not Bio, not Nano, not Gen.

Only the "advanced" version of reduced senses can't be overcome by cybereyes or genetech ^^

That's right. It's why you grab 10BP worth of NQ from Reduced Sight rather than 15BP.

Question: Why does in debt imply that you get money from it? I thought it implied that that you owe money, not that by taking the quality you actually get that money at char gen. It's not like going to a bank and taking out a loan, its a negative quality which to me means you get jack squat out of it, besides owing the money at chargen.

'Weak' (10BP) Blindness is a very special case. In nearly all cases, NQs do *not* have simple, no-karma methods of removing them. Often, the rules specifically say this (e.g., Enemy). I'm not sure Weak Blindness should even work like that, but it *does* at least require spending resources on replacement (time, money, Essence, etc.).

Jeremiah, do you mean 'why did they write the rule that way?' or 'why do you guys think this?'? Because the RAW is very clear about getting the money ('beyond the 30BP nuyen chargen limit', even). I agree that the rule *shouldn't* be like that, given how much BP you also get.

Whether it's taken raw or not, Just from a philosophical stand-point... it's not a disadvantage at all.

A: you get BP
B: you get money

The disdadvantage is you get debt, but debt isn't really bad. You're basically taking out a Loan and getting BP for doing so. Where as usually when you are "in debt" you are implied as being unable to pay it or having trouble with it. IF you technically had the money you could turn right back around and pay it off, keep the extra BP, deal with the problems (some grade A douchebag creditor), and move on all the BP richer.

Because it gives you money. The developers wrote it that way explicitly and so it is.

If I were to rewrite it I'd make the amount owed back 10 times the amount of money gained for chargen purposes (explanation: you took out a loan, only some of which has gone towards gear, you still have that gear, but also massive looming debt) and reduced the interest rate (1%, keeping the payments in line with what they are currently).

That way, instead of taking out 20k and paying back 30k, you're getting a 20k bonus starting cash and owing 200k. Which is actually pretty significant and makes the BP value look less attractive (i.e. fair).

Probably I'd also stipulate that the quality needs to also be paid off with karma or not (not making that decision here and now, but if I had to say which way I was leaning, I'd say no karma).