The GM has the option to give the character a Negative Quality. It does not mean that the Negative Quality needs be something that is totally detrimental to the character.

I disagree. The point of any role playing game is to experience the story from within a role. Fun is something that an individual experiences while performing some act. Fun is a purely subjective matter.



This paragraph humors me. I think it's because you jumped from your melodramatic shit-sandwiches to grandiloquent usage of verisimilitude.



That's not even a valid outcome of the HoG by even the most minimal standards. The person that should have died is left with unscathed. Paradox! He never died!



So just to sum it up. You expect to be rewarded for dying.



This scenario requires a complete ret con. If the detonator was a dude or it was wired wrong, then the explosives would have never gone off meaning the character would have never suffered the wounds that would have killed him, which means the character would have never died, which means the burning of edge could not have happened, which means that instead the character would have died, which means the edge would need to be burned, which means the character would not have died.....

Burning edge to live cannot negate the act which kills you without creating a paradox or an infinite loop nor do the rules even suggest that a ret con happens.



Fun.

I think your missing part of my caveat in that "verisimilitude" is important since my GMing style is very sandboxish. Players can go off the rails at anypoint--it is ok for players to refuse a job--I'll wing it and come up with something else for the session.

Also, not every research facility is a corp zero zone, meta-humanity/corpsec is not infallible (if it wasn't this way runners would not exist), and lastly having versimilitude in the campaign adds to the enjoyment of my players. YMMV though. Players are different, some are just looking to kill SEC guards, be all that they can be, be the biggest badass street/sam, magiician, hacker/techno/rigger, gun bunny or pornomancer. Others are looking at the character and trying to figure out what motivates the PC, how does their PC feel about killing a sec guard who has 2.5 kids depending on daddy's/mommy's salary to live. Some like to be posed with the moral hazard: Do I try to save a little girl held hostage by the toxic spirit? Or do I just do my job and try to chase after and kill the toxic shaman?

I guess what I'm trying to say is different groups of players/GMs have different styles of play. Some are more combat oriented, some are more non-combat oriented, some are very strict on RAW, some are loose with the rules. In the end you're right, it is all about the fun people have with the game. My players enjoy my style of GMing, I'm left with the impression you and some others on DS would not be. That is OK. So far the RPG police have not arrested either of us for doing it wrong.

You know, if you're putting story over fun, then the crap you pulled out and threw at me is getting thrown right back. Go write a fraggin novel and let people who actually care that their players are having fun take the GM seat.

And you know what??? For some people the story IS the fun. For me and the people I play with, if there is no story then there is no fun. Fun is what you make it with what you are handed.

Everyone go write a novel!

Hard to argue with these obvious and clear points straight from the RAW… but for some reason people are trying.

I disagree...

It may be there, but one can only hope that by the time the next edition comes along, they'll wise up and remove that little GM-abuse magnet.

Why replace the Edge at all? I never do. You make it sound like it is a mandatory exoenditure to do so.
As fo REQUIRING a counterbalancing Positive Quality for a received Negative, you would be waiting a LONG time (as in forever) to get a positive out of Burning Ege to survive at our table. Survival is its own positive. Now, saying that, we do not go out of our way to absolutely screw people over. BUT, there are always negative consequences when Burning Edge for survival. Most of them are not too hard to overcome. As Yerameyahu indicated, even Qualdraplegia is not that hard to overcome in Shadowrun.

Wait, so you're saying that little gem of RAW is a tool for GM's to abuse their group with? Man I gotta get on this, and then say "it's written in the book!".

GM Abuse is GM choice, there is never RAW for GM abuse. Honestly grow a pair or find a new GM, as no decent GM or a Decent Player would argue any of the above as abuse. I've had worse happen to characters in other less brutal systems. Shit I had to deal with my favorite minotaur character turned into a rock in old-school DnD, the fact was the group didn't have the effort or time to fix him, what made the whole situation hilarious was in an alternate dm game we came upon that rock at the center of a giant city, it was a know and loved piece of the city memorializing the efforts of the adventurer's who liberated said city from the forces of darkness. Gosh forbid you anyone every stone to flesh the thing...

The point is that without consequences, you have no purpose in playing a game. Without consequences why keep an inventory list? You don't have to worry about weight... Nuyen isn't an issue. Why even record your essense loss? Because those all have consequences.

Would that I could. My Novel Writing Chops are not all that impressive.
I can write a good story for Gaming, but an actual Novel still eludes me for some reason.

So you would sanitize the entire system to be character friendly?
Just Wow... Why even have dice mechanics at that poiint then? Just run free-form.

Show us on the doll where the GMs hurt you, All4BigGuns. :O At our tables, it's not the intent or the practice of the GM to 'abuse' things. We give them the freedom to maintain and enhance the game for our benefit. As StealthSigma pointed out long ago, this attack is on a straw man: '(if the GM is an asshole who randomly and inappropriately 'punishes' players and, by definition, a bad GM), this rule could be abused!' … Like all the rules?

It's not like we're talking about *player* rules abuse here, which is an actual problem that merits killing with fire. This is the GM's job, and for once, the RAW isn't wrong. Neither are you *required* to give people any NQs if you and your players don't like that. You're not even required to follow the RAW, and you can (not) do this today, instead of waiting for the next edition.

I am the sort of person that as a GM will give an illusion of choice. I would run a machiavellian campaign. In a sense, the way I would plan a campaign is to generate a number of mission ideas, none of which are required for the players to run because someone else will run them if the PCs don't. Of course, the intent is that the unspeakable horror will be released with the players barely having any clues to go with. The more missions they refuse that are related to the horror, the less likely they're going to know that it's being released. In fact, my overall design was such that players would refuse some of the dismally low or unusually difficulty sounding jobs related to the horror for more filthy lucre. Essentially, it was a game that was supposed to have the outward appearance of just doing a bunch of missions for fun. I never really got very far on it, unfortunately.

I would like to GM Paranoia sometime...

You just outlined my 200 Campaign Years (20 IRL Years) DnD Campaign. It was amazing to watch what the characters actually cared about and what they did not. When the horror of the campaign was revealed, they (with the exception of the 2 who actually caught on to what was going on) were caught so unawares that it was almost laughable. Of course, from that point on, it became a campaign of epic proportions. It was tremendously fun to run. Still dealing with the fallout of that campaign when I run the game. Had 5 sets of character incarnations in that time frame. Still have plots running through my head on that one.

It's definitely a lot easier to get big damn heroes out of D&D. A bit more difficult with Shadowrun, I would think. I wasn't entirely sure what to do about the big bad that could get the players wanting to be involved but my initial idea had been to make the horror something that threatened their lifeblood, megacorps. I was trying to figure out a way to cause the horror to collapse megacorps (no megacorps no running the shadows) that was semi-reasonable while making the horror something that runners could deal with while the corps and governments were mostly powerless.

Indeed... it is always a challenge.

In some ways, I think Shadowrun is a bit easier to digest, in that the Sideways advancement of Shadowrun allows a lot of flexibility, and the world does not swing too far, too fast. I do love my DnD Campaign (I am still using my beloved 3.5 Edition Set with a Black Company Rules Overlay) but I often have some issues with Level Based Advancement (Which the BC OVerlay helps with a bit, in my opinion) becasue of how the expectations of the way the world works (I absolutely hate Challenge Ratings). However, for sheer ease of campaign planning, DnD is the way to go. Simple and easy. Sometimes a little too simple.

I love running that Campaign for DnD, I vastly prefer to Play Shadowrun/nWOD.

Well, the problem as I see it. How to create a believable big bad that can pretty much take down megacorps, with all their resources, without them being able to stop it, while at the same time making it something that can reasonably be bested by runners. I honestly think that the only thing that can accomplish this would have to be some sort of pervasive AI that has access to records of what the various corps and governments can do, thus basically giving it perfect knowledge to counter anything they could throw to try to stop it.

Such a scenario would essentially be relying on the fact that runners are typically "off the grid" so to speak, and while there may be dossiers about them, they're a bit more prone to act outside of the box. The question, of course, being if runners are such a small element to be effective, why can Ares Firewatch or other specop level groups also capable of succeeding? I think that then leads to a potential climax which basically requires a bunch of the small "independent" teams acting cooperatively independently to fell the beast. Runners, "fighting alongside" Firewatch, government spec ops, and other runners.

Yeah, that is a tough one.
Indeed... How did it work out?

It didn't. I never got the players to run it. So planning much beyond the first couple of sessions felt pointless to me. On the upside, the generic appearance of it would make it something that could support a GM with two separate groups living and breathing in the same world without necessarily realizing it.... then once the big bad comes out.... have one mega session with all the players and get their collective WTF looks.

That would be very entertaining indeed...

"Bad enough"?!
"Expect"?!!
Free positive quality as compensation?!!!!!

You're NOT F***ING DEAD.

More to the point, the GM has bestowed his divine grace in allowing you to retain your oxygen privileges, so making demands is somewhat short-sighted to say the least.

While I disagree with making demands for bonuses for the HoG, you should remember that it's not a Get Out Of Jail Free card. You are actually paying for not dying by burning the edge. It actually costs you something already.

Only if you actually buy it back.

If you don't, you'll have a point of edge less than you normally would.

So...

So if you add edge dice to a check, you'll add a die less. You have a reroll less per reset. You can downgrade a crit glitch less often. You have one less Hand of God use remaining.

So... You act like it is an absolute MUST to actually have Edge. I guess if you design your character where he relies upon it to succeed, I could see your argument. Why, exactly, would you do so, though?

Sometimes you're unlucky. It's not a must, but a character with edge is better than a character without.

And until your Edge is a 0, then you have Edge.
It always amazes me how many people have come to rely upon Edge.
Sometimes, characters just run out of Luck.

And for reference. The vast majority of my characters have an edge of either 2 or 3. Have one with a 5, and one with a 6.
I never buy back burnt Edge, there are just to many other things that are much more interesting.
I have only HOG'd twice on 20 years of Shadowrun.

Edge is a great waste of points, as far as I am concerned.

Oh, and a Character with Edge is more LUCKY than a Character without. I would argue that they are NOT better.

Measured as average successes per session, a character with a point of edge will have more than a zero edge otherwise identical character. I define that as being better. When you include that you can choose when to use that edge, it also means that it can be used on a crucial roll.

Does not make you Better... It makes you Luckier. If I am already making enough successes to succeed, without the use of Edge, the extra successes from Edge are wasted.

EDIT: For example...
In our current game, we have a Character with an 8 Edge (he has about 250+ Karma). He has a few skills above 2 (maybe 3-4 of them, one of which is a 6), and many (probably 8-10 or so) at a 1. The rest being at a 0. He can spend that Edge to pull of some pretty entertaining things, but he generally uses it just to be competent. My character, on the other hand has an Edge of 2 (I have about 15 Karma). I have close on 50 Skills (Counting Languages and Knowledge SKills) and my general dice pools are in the 12 Range for about 5 of them. The vast majority of the rest are from 8-10 Dice, and I have a very few with only 5-6 Dice. I generally get as many successes on almost all my skill rolls, as he gets on his Edge enhanced rolls (the very few he can actually make that are Edge Enhanced), and I get FAR more on the rest of them than he can even approach without Edge (That whole defaulting hting sucks for him). So tell, me, who is Better?

Hint: Edge does not make the Edge Monkey Better, just Luckier.

That speaks more about optimization than it does edge.

If you are making enough successes to perform your rolls, you won't need edge, but you generally use edge when you're not getting enough successes...

Ironically, our resident Edge Monkey OFTEN blows Edge (He is a Driver, so he has a really good dice pool for this) just to LOOK GOOD (as he finishes a Race). He has already succeded, but he wants to succeed even more. It is quite entertaining. Especially wehen he really needs it later in the game and has already used it up.

And again, Edge is a finite Resource, so it has a hard time making you better in the long run. It is used to make you Luckier in the Short Run, when it is REALLY necessary. Most times anyways. Our Edge Monkey defies this logic.

As my group has found out, sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

Edge is a renewable finite resource. Depending on how the GM refreshes Edge, Edge can have an easier or harder time making the character better.

I think that as long as the character has an average dice pool of 6-8 in most skills, he isn't going to need to utilise Edge to be competent (and as long as he knows that he should not be dabbling in those areas where he is not competent in).

You got better luck with dice than I do then, or my group.

Suppressive fire is common in our games so higher than normal edge comes in handy.

/Agree

6-8 dice would on average for me be 1 hit. I can't count the number of times I changed dice too. Dice hate me (even those driven by software) so I usually play "Mr. Lucky" just so that I can have a chance of surviving.

-D

P.S.
In one session I rolled 18 dice 3 times and only rolled 2 hits each time.

I usually get 2 hits from 6 to 8 dice, 1 on rare occasions.

The last game session I played a few weeks ago, I had a group of guys that were surprised. I pulled both my pistols and did split dicepool intending to take down one and switch to the other. After my dicepool split i was at 10 and 11 dice....so 21 total dice...zero hits. I edge rolled right there because it was a crappy way to start an encounter.

Crap happens all too often regardless of your dicepool, and having edge on hand for those situations is very much a good thing.

Granted, but it does not make you better, just luckier.

TJ, i don't understand this comment. I am essentially agreeing with you completely. In general my mentioned character won't need to use edge with a 23 dice pool, if i'm not splitting. But its still nice to have. And with it only being an edge of 3, It will probably be getting raised sooner rather than later.

But Halinn is also right because if your lucky in the short term more often, then you are (essentially) better when it counts (assuming you aren't blowing it left and right and you have absolutely no luck with dice, in which case edge isn't going to help a whole lot anyway)

He's just being TJ. It is obviously 'better' to have more stuff; Edge is more stuff.

Sorry, no. The time loss and the Karma loss inherent in the burnt Edge are the maximum I'm going to tolerate. If you want to slap anything else on for flavor, then there had better be something counterbalancing it.




Perhaps you have confused "Playing a role-playing game" with "acting." It seems to me that this must, indeed, be the case.





Sure it is. Paradox? What paradox! You invoked the Hand of God in order to burn Edge and enact a minor retcon on the world. I have no problem with that.




No, I expect to not be penalized any further than the reasonable time-out and the loss of permanent Edge.



Sure it can. In fact, I believe explicitly one of the pictures used to illustrate the Hand of God was one wherein two dudes took a header out a window, and one dude's jacket gets caught on a flagpole, leaving him high and unhurt, while the other guy plummets to the earth to become a pavement pizza worthy of the Fat Bastoria.

Your slavish devotion to verisimilitude is depressing. This is a role-playing game. The point is to have a fun, above all else. If the verisimilitude is causing un-fun, then the GM needs to fix it.




You have fun mistaken with !!FUN!!. Fun is something you create with others, not inflict on them. !!FUN!! is not something which is typically fun, especially in an RPG.





Even if you never do, you had a point of Edge, representing either Bonus Points or Karma, and now you do not. It has been removed from you, ergo, you have been penalized that sum worth of Karma.

And that's fine by me. That's perfectly reasonable payment for the opportunity to stick a giant middle finger in the reaper's face.




Yes, and Edge burn, and time lost, are their own negative, and those are the only drawbacks explicitly prescribed in the book. Anything else, and you'd better goddamn cough up something to counterbalance it. Either way, I'm glad I don't play at your table, and I never will.



Quadriplegia is excessively hard to overcome. At the very least, it's going to cost you tens of thousands of nuyen, you're going to have to locate a clinic that can and will do the work without helpfully installing a cranial bomb next to your heart or ripping your headware memory or something while they've got you under the knife. Chances are you're not going to have that kind of cash, since, you know, you got injured whilst performing a criminal deed to earn money, especially given how tightfisted Shadowrun tends to be with the nuyen. And of course, since Quadriplegia isn't just "a thing" which happened to you but a negative Quality, you don't just have a nuyen price to pay, or did you forget? It also requires you to cough up thirty Karma, another sum which you are vastly unlikely to have anything near to on-hand unless you were an Awakened/Tecnomancer who was close to saving up for their 7th grade of Initiation/Submersion.

Through all of this, of course, you need to somehow keep up your lifestyle payments, or you wind up in the worst place to be - out on the street without working legs or arms. Even if you're Badass McCyberSamurai, if you can't walk or run, your ass is ghoul chow if you wind up there. If you can't even move your arms, you are literally helpless, and the only question is who gets to your chromed up carcass first; Tamanous, the gangers, your enemies, or the feral ghouls.

Either way, giving a character Quadriplegia, or even Paraplegia, might as well be saying "I hate that you have the ability to use the Hand of God to survive this but I'm too much of a coward to just say no to something in black and white in the rulebooks, so I'm going to make your character as good as dead and put him under an effective death sentence."

I disagree... Having SOME Edge is good, but there are a lot better things to be buying than Edge, in my opinion (Especially if you HoG'd to stay alive). I would much rather have a point of Agility to go with my agility skill-heavy characters (or Logic to go with my technical Characters, or Reaction for my Drivers, etc.) because it will ALWAYS be there, for every Roll invilved. Same goes with skills. Have a 1 in a Skill and you immediately gain 2 dice (No Defaulting). Edge is so dependant upon the specific table that I often find it mostly useless. That may have a lot to do with how I build my characters though. I build them to be competant without the need for Edge (Much like I build My Adepts to be competant without their Magic in case I am in a Background Count), so I only use Edge when I am thoroughly unlucky. This is a very rare occurrence for me (I generally have enough Dice (10-12 or so in my primaries) to succeed most of the time. I often get ribbed a lot at our table because I rarely ever actually use Edge. I just see no real need for it if the character is designed adequately enough.

Yes, it is nice to have when you absolutely need it. However, with the right design, you should rarely need it. Thus my Typical 2-3 Edge for my characters.

That said, even we have a player or two whose characters absolutely should have a high Edge, because they have apparently offended the gods of Fate, and their dice always turn on them. *shrug*

There is absolutely no Karma Loss in Burning Edge unless you are going to purchase it back. I see no need for this, personally.

Yes, and the spent Edge and the loss of a reasonable amount of time is the absolute most I am willing to trade for that privledge. If the GM is going to start heaping on additional rations of shit, then I expect additional positive qualities of equal, not lesser, and not greater, bonus point value to return the scales' balance to that point of lost Edge and time.

I don't have a problem with a near-death experience changing a person, but I do have a problem with it being entirely a punitive ration of crap force-fed to me. What doesn't kill only makes you stronger, and all that.




No, the GM doesn't have any "divine grace" in this matter to exercise. It's right there in black over white and blue on page 75 of the Shadowrun 20th Anniversary Core Rulebook that the player has the choice to burn permanent Edge from the character's sheet to allow the character to survive. The GM does not have any explicit prerogative to say "no" to this endeavor; as long as the character has so much as one point of Edge, the player is, in fact, quite literally entitled to say "Hand of God" and mandate that their character survives the encounter.

There's divine grace in there, and it's entirely in the player's hands, to be able to call that shot and make that cosmic retcon, or else stay quiet and let the character die in order to make a new one.



I'm not saying that the Karma cost of the Edge point burnt should be reimburst. The burnt point of Edge is, in fact, the "You must be this tall to jump ship on the River Styx" bar to be passed.

What I am saying is that that cost (and any reasonable time cost) are the most penalties that it is reasonable to assign to the player. Anything more can be fluffy and good - like the guy who got nuked in Astral space invoking the Hand of God, going on a metaplanar dream-walking trip, coming back Cursed but with new resolve - but only if there is, in fact, some counterbalancing positive quality to the negative one assigned.

Notice, ShadowDragon8685, that in all the text about Burnt Edge, it does not give the Character, or his Player, any control over what actually happens to the character except that he survives somehow. EVERYTHING that happens to the chareacter, at that point, is up to the whims of the GM. Period. You cannot DEMAND anything of him at that point. You get what you get, based upon the constraints of the story that is being told. It really is as simple as that.

Now, Some GM's will consult you on what they will do, and others will not. You have to be trusting enough of the GM to go with what he has in place for his story, and his ideas that he has for advancing said story and the characters within it. If you cannot do that, then why are you playing his game in the first place?

As for your insistence on a Counter-Balancing Positive. Most would consider that their survival was counter-balance enough.

You also can't forget the crappy GMs who basically "Oh, you spent Edge to try to kill my lovingly crafted enemy? Well he spends Edge to avoid it and then spends Edge again to shoot at you. Nyah!" Those GMs tend to be the ones who give unlimited Edge to every opponent.