As observed, that approach is not fair.

If I were ever a player at yur table, I would always opt for "In Debt", and never opt for Enemy. Even for the exact same BP value. Because In Debt will be easier to remove, than Enemy; I'll be able to remove In Debt for zero Karma ... whereas, Enemy? I guarantee you, it'll cost cash AND Karma to permanently deal with an Enemy.

The vory don't care for namby-pamby "shadow codes".


And die - because criminal syndicates have immensely more resources than any five PCs put together, and if they elect to hold a grudge, the PC they dislike is doomed.

Congratulations, roll up a new character. And if this isn't the first time this has happened, "In Debt" is no longer a choice you are allowed.

Ain't this the truth. Members of our group went to war with the Mob... Wow, what a mistake that was...

I think some people get the idea that the mob (or Yaks, or whoever) hires shadowrunners because "they don'thave anyone that good".

I don't subscribe to that school of thought. I believe the syndicates have many people that good and better.

Freelancers get hired because the syndicate wants an extra "cutout" in the operation, to provide some additional "firewalls" of deniability. Or because those "as good or better" in-house assets are occupied .... even if that occupation is just "laying low for a few weeks after their last op".

Or just because the freelancer will do the job for less money than the in-house asset would require.

...

But that doesn't mean the syndicate can't muster forces that are a challenge, an overwhelming challenge, for the PCs. Provided the syndicate gets irritated at a high enough level to prompt allocating those kinds of assets, of course. Which any protracted war with them, is going to eventually produce.

Sure, the PCs may absolutely devastate the syndicate before they go down. but a long enough war, even a shadow war, will eventually catch up with the PC(s), who will wind up part of the bodycount.

They don't even need someone as good as the shadowrunners. Just someone who knows where they live and a car with a trunk full of explosives.

Definitely... as the war progressed, my uninvolved Assassin was continually being dragged back into the situation, so one day, he just.... disappeared, and never returned.

OK. My 2c on this matter.

1) RAW getting rid of a Negative Quality requires 2xBP cost, GM approval, and potentially additional in-game requirements.
2) As a GM I have the oppinion: Never let the rules get in the way of the story, the group's fun, or something really cool. And I prefer something making sense, over something being "balanced".
3) If you pick a given Quality or Negative Quality for any other reason than because it fits the character concept, "BLEEEP!"...try again. I'm allergic to that kind of optimization antics. On the other hand I'd have no problem letting people getting away with removing the Debt NQ simply by paying off the debt in-game. And if you kill the Enemy you came up with me before the game, then depending on the nature of Enemy, I might just let you get away with it, and considder it over and done with, BP expenditure or not. On the other hand, there are plenty of Negative Qualities I wouldn't let you get rid of, no matter how much Karma you might be willing to throw at it, to make it go away.

IMO the prime purpose of Negative Qualities are character flavour and plot/story hooks, and if you ask me, I'd have no problem removing the bonus BP you get for taking them in the first place. And yes. As a player I'd still take some of them, if I felt like it suited the character.

That works both ways.

Thre are more people in the syndicate, than there are shadowrunners. Especially, more than there are player character shadowrunners.

Look, it's really simple: don't get into a war of attrition, with any organisation that has a million times your resources.

Of course not you find out where they are fighting with the other syndicates and hit them there and as soon as they are at a disadvantage you move to another point of conflict.

The one time that paying off In Debt came up in my group with only ¥ the GM ruled that the character (a technomancer) had to pay the regular amount plus the ¥ equivalent of the karma cost to remove it (¥25,000/level). It was agreed upon by the player and the GM before the game began. It was worked into the story as different things happened that required the character to pay ever increasing amounts. The most memorable of which was when the guy who had loaned the money charged the character so that he could make a pay-off so that evidence that he was money laundering would be destroyed and prevent him from being busted, then passed the costs to his "clients" who wanted to remain anonymous as an unforeseen expense of doing business with them.

Other than that we've used the replace a quality that's become a non-negative with another of equal value.

ok, let's try this another way:

2 people are in the same group. they face the same challenges, and for the sake of discussion, roleplay equally well, and there characters are identical except one of them has... oh, for the sake of argument, rating 4 gremlins (20 BP), while the other has in debt for 20 BP.

after playing several sessions, having received equal rewards in every way, the player with in debt decides to pay off his debt. now then, the player who took in debt suddenly has removed his negative quality entirely. the other player, having played just as well, contributed just as much, and for the sake of discussion being in all ways equal, would also like to remove his negative quality (gremlins).

now, if you would just say "ok, sure, you'll need to spend a few thousand nuyen on some sort of procedure that will remove your negative quality", then ok, you're being fair to both players.

if, on the other hand, you tell that second player they can't remove their gremlins flaw at all, you're treating the second player differently from the first, in spite of the second player having done everything just as well as the first. this is very clearly not fair to the second player, who has done nothing to deserve a lesser reward than what the first player got.

if you tell the second player that they must first resolve the negative quality in-game and then pay double the BP in karma, you are also treating the second player unfairly.

they have, for the sake of discussion, behaved identically. if the first player get to have a reward and the second player does not, is that not the very definition of unfairness? to treat one person poorly and the other well, for essentially no good reason?

now let's add in that most likely, they haven't been equal at all; the guy with gremlins 4 is probably suffering FAR more from the negative quality than the guy with in debt, because having to pay 3k a month is an inconvenience but suffering from a drastically increased number of glitches is a serious disadvantage. the guy who has gremlins most likely has been affected far more often, and has likely incorporated such a noteworthy flaw into his character as a fairly significant element. the guy who took in debt, it's probably barely even a footnote in their life. it certainly won't be around their character for very long, or at least it doesn't have to be.

as has been said: in the interest of treating your players fairly, you should be consistent. otherwise, expect your players to suddenly imagine lots of characters that have debts (because frankly, i can't think of a single character concept that couldn't owe someone a lot of money very plausibly), and for your players to set aside their characters with other (far more character-defining) negative qualities to get put on a shelf for someone else's game, because you are punishing a certain behaviour (choosing significant flaws that are difficult to remove) and rewarding another (purchasing easily-removed flaws that are not a significant part of the character's identity). or, alternately, expect some player dissatisfaction, because if you arbitrarily decide that one person is going to get slapped in the face, and the other is going to get a $10 bill, and neither of them did anything significant to deserve it, being upset is bloody well a perfectly reasonable response to that kind of treatment.

Now, you add in a statement at the beginning laying out what qualities can be removed with karma and an intervening action, which ones can be removed without karma by performing an appropriate intervening action and which ones can't be removed at all, and boom, it's fair again.

Also since when was Shadowrun meant to be fair?

If they spent some extra effort on it, then they would get roleplaying Karma, and thus be able to buy off the negative quality. Same thing with someone dealing with a bad reputation, or easing themselves out of a day job to transition to being a runner full time. They are earning karma during this time, so they can spend it to remove the negative qualities.


The game world may be dark and gritty, but the game itself has always been meant to be fair. Not in the sense of every choice being optimal, but as All4BigGuns says, players should all have the same choices available, and know what those choices are.

but then You should expect a lot of Players taking these ....easy-to-remove-NQ just for the sake of being easy BPs and not because it fits their Char, their Backgroundstory,expect everyone to have indebt NQ
Its kind of urging the Players to taking these Easy NQs,a kind of GMs Fiat.

he who rather dances fairly
Medicineman

Not Shadowrun, not the World, but the Rules and how You treat the PLAYERS !

with a Fair Dance
Medicineman

Oh well. Not like I personally give a rat's tush what qualities a player takes.

you should care about treating your players fairly.

the characters are in the game world, and the game world is not fair. that's fine. the unfairness is part of the challenge, which is part of what makes the game fun for many people.

but the players are presumably people you care to spend time with. at the very least, they are (probably) human beings. they are not showing up to be treated unfairly. and if it happens consistently, i would expect them to eventually just leave.

it's fine to have unfair things happen to the characters (provided the game calls for it). it is not fine to choose to make unfair things happen to the players, because

If they know ahead of time what qualities require what to remove (or which ones can't be removed at all), then it is fair. With such information given at the outset, then they've made a choice to take the harder to remove ones, and as such it is on them--another good reason for full disclosure of everything before starting a game.

no, i wouldn't really say that's fair at all.

it's a game. within reason, i should be able to play what i want, without being punished for it. if i want to play a character with gremlins or infirm, i shouldn't be dramatically worse off than a player with in debt or mysterious cyberware (allowing for difference in quality values, etc).

or rather, i shouldn't be punished for thinking "hey, it would be cool if i played a character with <insert negative quality here>". your system is set up such that someone who wants to play certain negative qualities is stuck with them, while others are essentially getting a free ride.

in short, you are making a system where rather than playing what they think will be fun and interesting, they've got a strong incentive to play only what will be effective. and there isn't even a good reason behind it.

i'm fine with "i don't want to charge players karma for role-playing the removal of their negative qualities". the problem is when only some negative qualities are treated that way, while others are not.

for example, suppose i was to set up a system whereby people who profess to believe in my religion are treated one way (which religion it is isn't important for the purposes of this discussion) and those who do not profess to believe in my religion are treated another way, which is less desirable.

if i announce ahead of time that people who do not profess to believe my religion will be punished in some way (regardless of how major or minor the punishment is), did my announcement ahead of time, and allowing them to then choose what they want to claim as their religion, make this any more fair? is it fair that if they want to avoid punishment, those who don't believe in my religion must lie?

personally, i would look at that system and say no, that isn't fair. it is, in fact, distinctly unfair.

so what makes you think that when you have functionally the same scenario, except with negative qualities instead of religions, you get a fair system? shouldn't people be free to choose their negative qualities to fit their characters without being unduly punished? obviously, this isn't as important an issue as religious freedom, but if treating your players fairly is a goal (and it should be), then why would you not be fair by applying the same rule equally to all negative qualities instead of only some?

Qualities are far from equal already - I don't know if I would want to add more inequity to the mix by making some easier to get rid of. I mean, yeah, there are going to be some options that are flat out better than the others in a wide-open point build system like Shadowrun's - heck, look at the controversy over the cost of playing an oni metatype. But this is taking things that should be the same and giving them different underlying mechanics, for what seems to be arbitrary reasons. Of course, the GM is free to fiddle with things like that if encouraging or discouraging certain qualities is the goal (I still think just tweaking the point values would be better, even for that), but it is essentially cutting down on meaningful player choices.

I think that it is not so much giving them different underlying mechanics but instead confirming and making clear that the underlying mechanics are different and the GM is aware of such differences.

Sometimes that works, and sometimes it does not. The last mob war we were involved in (at our table) included multiple factions, becuase some of the PC's figured that it was good to piss in EVERYBODY's wheaties. Once the commonalities were identified, well, lets just say that the Syndicate (Multiple Families; 3 if I remember correctly), Triad and Yakuza dedicated themselves to eradicating the PC's instead of going after each other. It was quite brutal.

Or, you go with the actual book, and all NQ's must be resolved in game, and then removed with Karma. *shrug*

I so LOVE my Oni Ninja...

In fact, you know what? Thinking about In Debt, I've decided that in the future, the PC w=ill not be allowed to even begin paying their principle down, not by one single nuyen, until they've paid enough Karma to reduce the BP value of the NQ.

Otherwise, their creditor refuses to accept extra money, or "loses" it somewhere in red tape, or "forgets" to apply it to the principle, whatever suits the story best.

My Char NOX (Ork Rigger) has indebt (10.000 ¥ from his Fixer Eve Donovan)
he pays it back in 10 Payments of 2000(no Time Limit) and with every Payment He's paying back I also pay 2 Karmapoints.
Until he has paid every rate he's inclined to do Runs for her even though they're kinda dangerous Ones
Thats a Deal I made with my former GM.I don't have to worry about interest rates and growing debt and He's got a Hook to get my Char into his Runs

with an agreed upon Dance
Medicineman

Which is not a bad way to go.
We tend to go that route, but we do keep the timeframe.

You had Archangel on your team?!?

Well, a couple of characters (and Players) decided that The Underworld organizations could not treat them that way (poorly. because they were pissing in the organization's wheaties) because they thought that they were the top of the heap, as far as the Shadows went. They really started to get the picture when the Assassin just disappeared, with no forwarding address/contact information. He literally hung them out to dry, since he was the most deadly one in the group, followed by the insane Merc Troll, who separated from the group as well. In the end they had to eat some crow and make nice with everyone (and some various other things that were going on) or they were going to be eliminated. Shadowrunners cannot compete with organizations. They can hurt them, to be sure, but they WILL lose in the end.

It really depends. It largely depends on the attitude of the GM and his views on whether shadowrunners can or cannot compete with such organisations.

Which is to say, "it really depends on how sane the GM is, in terms of whether or not the believe four or six guys can take down world-spanning multi-trillion-nuyen organisations just because they have secret 'I'm a player character, Bitch!' tattoos."

No. It is to say that if the player characters have such leet skills like Fastjack, have initiation levels approaching Caimbeul's, wealthy enough to be on the A-list of the Grand Tour, then as a GM, I will not say that they cannot take down such world-spanning multi-trillion-nuyen organisations just because they have secret 'I'm a player character, Bitch!' tattoos."

Unlike some GMs, I will not dismiss the possibility out of hand. If you as a GM want to close your mind to such a possibility, then it is your perogative as a GM. But I am open to reasonable approaches to the issue and I am of the opinion that as the characters increase in their power level, the probabilities of success at any endeavour increases.

I believe that a syndicate with leverage over a violent career criminal would typically exert that leverage in subtle and incremental ways, rather than making serious threats against the runner and literally backing him into a corner.

If it does come down to a war of attrition, syndicates will usually win, just because they have more people and resources. But syndicates are composed of individuals. Sometimes you can deal with an adversary within an organization without declaring a scorched earth war against the entire organization.

So you think being a Bright Light on Jackpoint / Shadowland, makes yu immortal? Unkillable? Untouchable?

...

Go ask Hachetman how that's working out for him.

So you think that being a syndicate or a corp makes you immortal? Indestructible? Untouchable?
...
Shadowrun history is littered with as many failed corps and dead syndicates as dead runners, go ask them how that's working out for them.

No, but it definitely means you have more "hitpoints", cash, karma, and expensive toys than any one, or even ten, shadowrunners.

and that's just this week's petty cash fund.


How many of them were killed solely by a single small group of runners?

No. I disagree what it "definitely" means, it probably means that it has more resources but it is not definite. For what it is worth, to me, Damien Knight, Richard Villiers and Mile Lanier are no more than very successful NPC runners.

I don't know. The very best runs are those you never know about.

Who do you think has more money? A PC Shadowrunner ... or the entire Seattle Yakuza ...?

Now, who do you think owns more guns? More grenades? More shoulder-launched missiles?

Who has more warm bodies to wield them?

Hint: it ain't the shadowrunners.

some say Dragons can't be killed, some say Syndicates can't be messed with.
They're wrong ! Dragons CAN be killed and Syndicates CAN be toppled.
Its nothing any of my Chars would ever do (I'm not Insane )
but with the right Idea(s) and the right Resources& Actions it might be possible !
As a GM You should give Your players a fair chance to try it and not bar it right from the Start
be fair, be objektive and let the players dig their own grave ,but maybe they succeed ?(and that is where the epic Stories come from)

with an epic Dance
Medicineman

You forgot who has more enemies/competitors to stab them in the back the moment they are distracted.

Hint: it ain't the shadowrunners.

Who is an Organisation who's Bosses can die just as easily

Hint: it ain't the shadowrunners.
If the Runners find out the whereabout of the Syndicate Leaders and strike out very fast, very efficiently
(like in "Gone in 60 Seconds "with Kills instead of GTA) they have a decent Chance of "winning"

with a decent Dance
Medicineman

Probably the Seattle Yakuza. But I won't discount the possibility that a PC shadowrunner having more money than the entire Seattle Yakuza. (One of the possible "rewards" at the end of SOTF was Lowfyr's counteroffer, guess who has more money than the several times the Seattle Yakuza? Hint: Not the Seattle Yakuza)

The correct answer to your questions is quite possibly the shadowrunners. But hey, you can keep your mind closed to the possibility.

we've had organized crime conflicts in our games before, and I usually run them where as long as they can keep things below the "city" level the runners have a good chance of surviving.

Once they get the attention of the entire "Seattle" organization, they had better have some savvy political moves to go along with their physical ones if they want to survive (ie, they might be able to help bring about a change in power structure but that's only helpful if they have an ally to fill the vacuum)

If they happen to get the attention of the worldwide organization it is time to change your face, prints, and DNA and find a deep, dark hole to climb into for a few years.

This is true, yes. In our case, we started that way... unfortunately, I am sure that several of the Characters DID have those secret tattoos, and becasue of it they expanded their personal vendetta to an all out war (there was a LOT of character EGO involved, go figure... "They can't do that to ME"). It was entertaining, though.

Stop. Fair is, in fact, relative to the player. I'm not going to make someone pay Karma to remove an NQ which they have gone to extraordinary in-game lengths to remove - such as removing NQ Enemy by finding the guy who's hounding you, interrogating him for information on everyone who would want to avenge him if he suddenly went missing and on his insurance policies, and then pre-emptively killing them and disarming his "in case I die" bombs before executing him, and making absolutely sure the HoG couldn't apply by (for instance) removing and incinerating his head.



Then so be it. I'd rather not abrogate all forms of common sense by trying to suggest that someone is going to be so stupid as to continue to try to collect money on a debt that has been paid in full, from a member of a professional group of violent felons-for-hire, because the player has paid up the money but not the Karma.


It's not as if Shadowrun even remotely tries to pretend that all NQs of the same point value actually have the same amount of negative impact on the player anyway. I'd just as soon that players bought cheap NQs for extra points and paid them off/sorted them out early than try to crack down on point-grubbing, especially since it's basically impossible under standard chargen to make an effective character who isn't a minmaxxed munchkin in the first place.

So, there is absolutely no way that the guy you killed was not the real guy? Magic, Cloning, Patsy, Misdirection of Information, Etc. Plenty of ways to keep that enemy after all that "Hard Work" you seem to be so proud of. Or, they do not buy off the Enemy Quality and it morphs into a NEW thing (A NEW Enemy or something else entirely), based upon your actions. You do not get to remove NQ's from your sheet without paying the Karma Costs. You seem to be forgetting that ALL NQ's must have extensive and quality roleplaying involved in resolving them to start with. That is the Condition to actually removing them from your sheet, which takes Karma. *shrug*

There's only so many times you can pull that shit, especially when an entire Runner group invests as much effort into supermurdering someone who's giving the whole team grief. Especially with "Enemy" - that NPC effectively gets "Enemy: That whole goddamn Runner team" on his NPC sheet, too.



"You do not get to remove NQ's from your sheet without paying the Karma Costs." - Yes, you do, if it makes sense that you do. If you owe money, you pay back the money and whatever interest is owed you. It's that simple. If you're being hunted by someone who's a schmuck, you off the schmuck and go the extra mile to ensure his torch doesn't get picked up by someone else. Not simple, but it works. Resolving all NQs does not require extensive and quality roleplaying. Sometimes it really is as simple as putting a fat credstick in a courier box and sending it to your local Mafia bookie with a note saying "Now we're even." Sometimes it is as simple as just deciding you've had enough Gremlins in your life and pay the Karma and your "curse" goes away.

"Hold on didn't I kill you already?"
"No that was my brother!"
"Wasn't the last guy I killed a brother too?"
"Big family... Now then! My name is Insistento Menacoya, you killed my brother, prepare to die!"
"I wish you would stop saying that..."