One of the eternal debates in Shadowrun – karma versus cash rewards. The Awakened/Emerged want karma – bucket loads of it for breakfast each day. Everyone else says "show me the money!" Decades later and a million posts about "properly balancing" rewards, and the issue persists.

Well…why not take a sword to this particular Gordian Knot and implement a single medium of reward?

I first started seriously considering this solution after reading this thread a while back. The more I’ve pondered this, the more it’s seemed like it might just be a viable concept. So, what do PCs want to purchase with their run rewards?

• Gear and Cyberware: Already cost cash, we’re good here.
• Improved Attributes: Training, pricey surgery, or even magical rituals (all costing money) could account for improving these after character creation.
• Improved Skills: The easiest category to justify with cash – you spent it on specialized training.
• New Qualities: Same as for improving Attributes.
• New Spells: Spell formulae typically cost money, but enterprising players get around this all the time, and many are posted on the Matrix for free. Spells could then just have a set cost in expendable magical supplies to "fully learn" them back in the mage’s lodge.
• Foci: These already cost serious cash. Just bump up the cost per level of Force to account for expendable magic supplies used back in the mage’s lodge to bond the focus for their use.

So, just how much cash for these? In the end, it might just be easier to come up with a cash-to-BP conversion rate, instead of the typical cash-to-KP, since Qualities are listed in BP costs anyway, and the BP costs for Attributes (10 BP per point), Active Skills (4 BP per point), Knowledge/Language Skills (2 BP per point), and Spells (3 BP each) are right there in basic character creation.

Everything now comes down to how much cash the PCs get paid, with all rewards being easily quantifiable in monetary terms. The world really does run on money with this system.

Your thoughts?

Interesting, but BPs are sort of streamlined for fast and cheap creation.

Advancing afterwards always costs more, with your flat BP rate you would pay the same to take a stat from 2 to 3 as you would from 5 to 6.
Which means you would be capping out pretty fast game-wise. Hence the cost gets bigger and bigger as you climb that particular tree, whether its a stat or skill, to slow you down a bit in game.

So maybe just means making a price curve that mimics the karma curve for things like skills/stats. Spells don't have a rating so a flat fee for these seems fine.

Second issue is what do you earn now per run? Before you were getting cash and karma, now it's just cash. Are you recommending a pay hike to reflect the transition?

This also raises questions of what about jobs that don't pay out in cash? i.e. those feel good runs? Before you got karma at least to soothe your soul, if not the wallet.

You could argue about some sort of 'barter' system involved... ie saving those farmers earned you some favours that you called in for time training/reagents/etc... but then it gets kind of messy tracking.
Not impossible mind you, it's not so different than being paid in gear by a Johnson, but you can see what I mean.

I forget, sometimes, that not everyone runs according to our group’s house rules, especially when some of them are long-established ones. That stupid "pay over double cost" to go from a 5 to 6 was thrown out literally on Day 1 when we started playing SR4 years ago. We have flat costs because the benefits are flat as well. What’s the difference when you go from Logic 4 to Logic 5? +1 die to roll. What’s the difference when you go from Logic 5 to Logic 6? +1 die to roll. Flat benefits, flat costs. But yes, if you’re going by canon costs, you’d need an increasing price curve. I’ll see about getting some starting numbers for us to play around with in this thread, and I’ll include both pricing levels.



Well, that was pretty much the subject of the above thread I was referencing. So, yes, runners need to be adequately paid for both risking their necks and for reasonable expenses. Which is certainly more than canon rewards. "Ok, so you'll need to assassinate Lofwyr, topple the Corporate Court, colonize Mars, cure HMHVV, and achieve world peace. Will $20 bucks cover it?" And...we're back to stealing cars instead.



I can safely say we've never done any charity runs. Ever. What can I say? I'm a Material Girl.



Well, considering that gear/services are what a lot of the money will be spent on (though for some runners, "Hookers and Blow" counts as such), then having Johnsons pay with barter instead of cash could actually work out better for the PCs in some cases; it will depend on what the Johnson has to offer. An Ares Johnson can get a crate of guns, no problem, but probably not a lot of magical supplies.

There are some good arguments to be made for a flat rate on advancement, but as we mentioned you will see top end stats/skills rather quickly as you get to skip that steep curve.
I would be curious to hear about the stats/skills of some of your longer run characters and the time frame it took to achieve them.


Ahh.. SedanRun™

Heh. Can't fault you for that, it's a tough world we be in. But some things don't always come with a paycheque, but then sometimes I can be a romantic at heart, or at least the heart I keep in the drawer may have been.

This can go either way. If it's stuff they can use, fine. If not they can try selling it on, but that can be a boon or bane to the GM and whether he wants to play up that side as it can involve a lot of Haggling/Negotiating rolls.
But the plus side it can really draw in using Contacts or other funs twists that only players can come up with.

Well, there's less to see here than you might think. We alternate between between Call of Cthulhu and Shadowrun. And when we get back to Shadowrun, it'll be a new campaign, possibly under a different GM, and we'll be creating new characters either way. This is another reason we create characters at double normal starting points - we won't be playing them for years, so we start out with them fairly leveled up already. At least half the time, we get traded favors, gear, or services anyway as rewards; I typically throw any KP towards new spells.

That seems very sensible then as an advancement model to give them maximum fun given the short shelf life of their characters.

I'd do it (and I've in fact done it in my house rules) the other way around: karma is the only way to improve your character.
If you want to use money to buy an improvement (be it cyberware or just a new gun or tool) you need to spend karma to turn it into an "investment". In return, you've got the possibility to repair/resupply at a fraction of the cost (so that if your rigger loses his million nuyen drone he doesn't suddenly because useless).

Optionally (especially when not playing in full campaign mode), all nuyen that hasn't been turned into investment can be lost between runs, considering that it has been spent on your character's variant of booze and hookers. The character's starting nuyens at a beginning of a run will always be rolled according to their lifestyle.
This is quite useful when you've got players who mostly play one-shot sessions with different GMs.

The upside of using karma instead of cash for advancement is that karma is more controlled. Cash can be obtained by taking everything that's not nailed down and selling it. This is something that I find uninteresting at a gameplay level, and rewarding it with character advancement seems very counter-effective to me.

I'm actually still working on some tables and figures here, it's just that work has heated up and I'm still doing some number-crunching in Excel. Is it possible to insert a table into a post here? That would make things a lot easier to display.

The problem I see here - if I'm interpreting your idea correctly - is that it seriously strains suspension of disbelief. The players know they'll get Karma as a reward for the mission. But in-game, that means the PCs are doing everything for free - no one ever pays them cash for any jobs they do. You'd think word would get around fairly quickly - "Are you guys the team that works strictly for free? You are? Fantastic!" It seems like this would turn rather bizarre fairly quickly. On the other hand, actually getting paid money for work makes more sense.

No, the runners still get paid in nuyens (or some currency). However the karma limits the amount of nuyens they can invest in permanent character improvements.
They can get paid 1 million nuyen for a run, but unless they have enough karma (and spend it to invest these nuyens) they won't be able to spend them all to permanently improve their characters.

They can still decide to spend 10K nuyen on some piece of cyberware or drone without spending the karma, but in that case if the cyberware or drone gets damaged, they will have to pay the full costs of repair. I know that most GM won't ruin the fun of their players by having them lose their precious toys, but with this rule you don't have to pull your punches: if the gear was an investment, the PC will get it back at a low cost, if it wasn't then he knew the risks. Either way, you can now have an expensive deck/drone/vehicle/implant get destroyed without making the character lose BP/karma value.

You can also have PC who spend their money on fluff stuff without getting penalized compared to those who spend it all on character improvement. And you can pay very high amounts of money without breaking balance or progression speed.

So how would a character be able to upgrade a piece of cyber? I mean in SR4 going from MWB 2 to MBW3 would cost at least 90000 . That translates into 35 Karma (5000 for each point of Karma). For 35 Karma, a mage can get a lot of toys.

Then they're still getting paid in two different forms of rewards. That approach doesn't really resolve the cash vs. Karma problem, it's just a different method of using both together. What I'm trying to do is establish a single medium of reward.

That's what Anarchy does. The results are bizarre, though, as you now negotiate for Karma in-game. Using only cash seems at least more immersive.

For character generation, and for general pricing, I'd look to the karma cost for cash in Karmagen. It's 5000/Karma. I think that's a ratio you can work with.

Haven't picked up Anarchy yet. The reviews I've read so far are...mixed. But yes, that's another reason why I'd prefer to use cash, as I mentioned in an above post.



That's one of the models I'm playing with in Excel. But work won't slow down until late next week - mostly work and sleep now, with the occasional chance to check in here.

Here are some initial numbers to play around with. The tables below may not be pretty, but it's the best I've been able to figure out how to post here, after numerous experiments with the BB Code tags.

Conversion Rates:

• 1 BP = 5,000 ¥ (as per SR4A Core Rules, p. 86)
• 1 KP = 2,500 ¥ (as per SR4 Runner's Companion, pp. 41 - 42)

Attributes:


Active Skills:


Active Skill Groups:


Knowledge Skills:


Magic:

• New Spell: These cost 5 KP, or now 12,500 ¥ (and one week's study in your magical lodge).
• Initiation: This is a one-time deal at our table. Initiating grants the ability to raise Magic over 6, access to the metaplanes, and the ability to purchase an unlimited # of metamagic techniques. Cost is 30 KP, or now 75,000 ¥.
• New Metamagic Technique: These cost 15 KP, or now 37,500 ¥ (and one week's study in your magical lodge).

Focus Bonding:

• Banishing: 7,500 ¥ * Force
• Binding: 7,500 ¥ * Force
• Counterspelling: 7,500 ¥ * Force
• Power: 25,000 ¥ * Force
• Spellcasting: 10,000 ¥ * Force
• Summoning: 10,000 ¥ * Force
• Sustaining: 5,000 ¥ * Force
• Weapon: 7,500 ¥ * Force

Ok, finally got this all posted. First day of "vacation" and I’m working from home half the day, but at least I managed to get the base figures uploaded. The above represent canon figures as a starting point for further refinement here. If we’re converting everything to money, however, I’m inclined to just start rounding figures to the nearest 5,000 ¥ or 10,000 ¥.

One thing to keep in mind is that our group doesn’t do long campaigns. An average Shadowrun campaign for us is 3 to 6 months (real-world time), after which the characters will be retired. Accordingly, we start out at double normal starting points, and even that’s negotiable; we’ve all known each for about two decades and know what’s appropriate for our gaming table. So typical KP advancement is too slow for such a short period of time. Our typical method is to just use 2 KP = 1 BP and then advance according to the starting character construction rules. This is why I included both BP and KP advancement costs in the above tables – are you advancing quickly or slowly? Your table, your call.

But the next big question is then…just how much are the PCs getting paid anyway?

In our previous campaign, we were a fully-legal paracritter buster firm based in the PCC, and we charged 1,000 ¥ per person per day (plus expenses). Most of us had High Lifestyle, and the entire team was Awakened (and one Technomancer). That seemed to work out fairly well for us, given steady employment. However, we were getting some Karma on top of that, which under this new system we wouldn’t be getting anymore.

After consulting this thread and this thread, I’m going to propose the following guidelines.

If you’re doing "traditional" Shadowrun campaigns, then 1 month’s worth of expenses is the base pay for a single run. If the PCs are Low Lifestyle, that’s at least 2,000 ¥ per run. If Middle make it 5,000 ¥, and if High make it 10,000 ¥. This assumes they’ll be out risking life and limb at least once a month.

Modifiers:

• Milk Run: quarter Base Pay
• Easy Run: half Base Pay
• Average Run: Base Pay
• Tough Run: double Base Pay
• Super-Difficult Run: quadruple Base Pay

But they need to make more than just monthly expenses. "Where do they get those wonderful toys?" Well, typically they need to buy them. How fast do the players expect to be able to get them? And are their expectations reasonable? As someone who always plays mages, I went with the "one new spell per run" rule back when we were running more traditional campaigns. As long as I came out of the job with a new spell to my name, I was happy. It’s not a bad rule, I think.

Going by the above guide, however, I’d need to do at least do two runs a month if I want some toys (now including things normally bought with Karma) beyond basic expenses.

What do you all think?

With the long weekend, I’ve had some time to consider simplification of the costs in the above tables, and here's what I'm looking at now:

• Improve a Physical Attribute by +1: 50,000 ¥
• Improve an Active Skill by +1: 25,000 ¥
• Improve an Active Skill Group by +1: 50,000 ¥
• Improve a Knowledge Skill by +1: 10,000 ¥
• Spells: 10,000 ¥ for the formula (if you buy retail), then another 10,000 ¥ for supplies and 1 week in your magical lodge to fully learn it.
• Initiation: 100,000 ¥ for supplies and 1 week of preparation in your magical lodge; this is a one-time expense.
• Metamagic Techniques: 50,000 ¥ for supplies and 1 week in your magical lodge to fully learn it.
• Focus Bonding: 10,000 ¥ * Force for all foci, except for Power foci which are triple cost.

Short and simple. It's primarily based on us having High Lifestyles (10,000 ¥ a month), and typically earning 20,000 ¥ a month. So half of our cash pays for our semi-lavish lifestyles, and the rest can pay for toys and personal improvement.

Just curious, but why you are mandating a full week to learn a spell/initiation/metamagic technique...

As a justification for why a mage who just won the lottery doesn't then immediately know every spell ever invented.

There is a roll involved, with a base time divided by successes to learn the spell, if I remember correctly (Though I may be remembering a different edition - have not played a mage yet in 5th)

Yep, Here it is...

Shadowrun 5th, Page 299

That's 5th edition stuff, which (for the most part) we've skipped over. I was careful to tag this thread as SR4. That said, in this instance I think they're thinking in the right direction, but instead of a roll, just calling it a week is simpler. I've a got group of people who are Call of Cthulhu and Old World of Darkness players, and most of us are big on mechanics being as simplified as possible. In this case, if it's a choice between making rolls - the result of which will be about a week, plus or minus a few days - or just saying "it takes a week," then the latter will be used.

Sorry I missed the Tag. I too prefer SR4 for the most part.
However, 4th Edition does the same thing... It is a little easier as the interval is 1 Day rather than 12 Base Days, but...

SR4A Anniversary Edition, Page 182
Learning Spells



But I do understand the simplification... I was just curious as to the rationale.

Thanks

Darn, missed that in the Core Rules. Thanks for the heads-up, though; I occasionally get little bits pointed out to me that were there all along but I somehow missed them.

Happens to me too.
Good Luck.

Back in the wicked old days...I used to ask my players at the end of a run what they wanted more for the next run, cash or Karma. And I just wrote around that. Players seemed to be pretty happy with it.