I think that 5E never got the right balance karma/Nguyen-wise. E.g., runners that can actually buy expensive equipment and augmentations are rich enough to retire. It feels strange to me to burn a fortune on expensive equipment when your character has other financial ambitions (e.g., making a lot of money)... buying the expensive equipment feels a bit like self-destruction - you get a bit more power, but at what opportunity cost. How many years of work would it take to break even on that super expensive piece of equipment (whereas adding more spells and adept powers feels more like leveling up than giving up your future)?

Our balance is also very much skewed for Karma. E.g., it took four years of real-time and half a year of game time, and AM is still not finished paying for the 50k Erika. 50k is not that much for a character that depends on expensive equipment to excel, and by that time we got a few hundred karma points which can progress magic/adept powers a lot more.


I feel like Karma gives progression, which is more attractive to awakened (e.g., adept powers are similar to augmentations.) does not have this immersion-breaking feel like upgrading cyberware or buying insanely priced drones or cyberdecks.

Yes, you're exactly right. I agree completely. I wrote a forum post on this years ago. Long story short, all rewards (and costs) need revamping.

Oh, nice!

Bye
Thanee

Yeah, 5E did not exactly make this better compared to 4E, where the prices were quite a bit lower in many places. Cyberware should be "street-level", at least the lower grades. How else are ganger ending up with that stuff? At least the higher-grade 'ware is more affordable now.

Riggers also have this money-sink problem, I believe.

Maybe just think about allowing mundanes to trade in Karma for Nuyen at some rate that makes sense. Like the 2,000¥ that CharGen allows, or even higher (i.e. 3,000¥ or even 5,000¥).

For example:

When a mundane character gains a Karma reward, they can immediately trade in up to half of their Karma (regular, not Knowledge) for 2,000¥ (or 3,000¥ or even 5,000¥) each. That money is not actual money, but a resource pool that can only be spent on equipment/vehicles/drones/'ware (can be saved up). Thematically, it is considered favors or cost reductions (maybe they found a really good deal on that certain piece of 'ware they were looking for; they still have sales in Shadowrun, right?).

Bye
Thanee

Ok, I spent most of the 18 Karma (and half of that in Knowledge Karma).

Nauseate Spell (5 Karma)
Guidance Spirits (5 Karma)
Spirits of Man (5 Karma)
Gymnastics 1 (2 Karma)
Area Knowledge (Redmond) 3 (3 Knowledge)
Area Knowledge (Bellevue) 1+2 (3 Knowledge)
Area Knowledge (Downtown) 1 (1 Knowledge)
Sioux Sign Language 1 (1 Knowledge)
Cooking 1 (1 Knowledge)

Bye
Thanee

Thanee, the knowledge karma really is karma, not knowledge points, so we're using the advancement tables on p. 107. A rating 1 skill is 1 knowledge karma, then advancing it to rating 2 is 2 karma, for a total of 3. So 3 knowledge karma in Area Knowledge (Redmond) would be worth rating 2.

The book says that specializations for knowledge skills costs 7 karma. That's pretty expensive, since that's the equivalent of a new knowledge skill at rating 3 (plus one knowledge karma left over). I'd be comfortable lowering that cost if other people are.

We were talking about karma-to-nuyen conversions just recently. We weren't doing it for a long time because it would make paying off our In Debt qualities trivial and that was a key piece of our storyline for the first few years. Now that we're mostly paid off, it will be an option. I'm going to be honest that I can't remember exactly what we agreed on. There's a free spirit named Green Toes who is willing to purchase karma, but there are compromises with your memories (and your soul) if you do so. I vaguely remember something along the following lines:

* Green Toes will purchase up to 5 karma at 5,000 nuyen apiece per chapter
* After that, the conversion is 2,000:1

I can't remember if we had separate rules for mundanes and Awakened.

To Thanee's and gilga's point, now that I'm in the weeds up upgrades I'm realizing how little 10,000 nuyen will purchase. I have between 212,000 and 238,000 nuyen of cyber on my To Do list, which is going to take a while. Part of my dilemma is balancing the gear advancements with the regular karma expenditures. And, honestly, the 200K isn't even going to change Mato's functionality THAT much. There's a general impression that characters - especially mundanes - leave chargen at about 80% of their final power level, and that's certainly true for Mato. He's had some upgrades and boosts but he's not dramatically different from what he was four years ago. Feels strange to say that after 358 karma.

My understanding was that mundanes can use the 5000: 1 karma conversion (at the cost of giving Green Toes quite a bit of their soul), while the magic types would be more reluctant and just do some regular soul crushing work for 2000: 1 karma

All with the 5 karma max per interlude/story to make the money influx a bit more believable.

Yeah, I understand that.

Already had it at R2 (just renamed it), this was only for the bump to 3.

In comparison, I put R1 and R2 into the Bellevue one, which I wrote as 1+2, and which also cost 3.



I actually stumbled onto that today as well. Seemed weird, that Specs cost the same as for Active Skills. I would just half that cost, like the general cost for Knowledge Skills is half that of Active Skills.



Not if you use what I suggested above.



Yeah, I can certainly see that. My other character, who is also a cybered mundane, will need to save money for quite a while to get some big upgrades at some point.

Bye
Thanee

That works.

That Green Toes encounter was over 2 years ago. Strange, I thought it was more recent than that.

Here it is if anyone wants a refresher: https://www.rpgplayroom.net/rooms/the-found...er-5-ic/page/5/

Thanee, not sure if you have access to that page (or site). We started on the official forums before migrating to RPG Playroom before finally ending up here, as Dumpshock is usually quite stable.

Yep, reading there works.

Bye
Thanee

I would suggest being able to buy expensive equipment with karma instead of converting karma to money.
RPed as appropriate. E.g., Mato can get gifts from his father or perhaps install a software update to unlock premium features in his cyberlimbs. Maybe is super expensive cyberware is insured, and he finally finished all the paperwork to get the claim.
Tamarind can build a new drone from scratch or buy a self-assembly kit and gradually build it as she gains more karma. Or perhaps something in her background grants her access to a new drone, e.g., she may inherit one from a dead comrade or be asked to look over a drone for a friend stuck in Denver.


You did not necessarily pay money for that, and you still need a lot of karma for the expensive stuff. E.g., 50 or 20 karma for a 100k piece of equipment. I suggest something like that because converting karma to nuyen either does not solve the problem because we keep the amount converted low. Or it creates other problems, as you pointed out, where money stops being rare or hard to come by.
Why don't we each just give up one karma per month to make rent? I don't want it to be so simple. What I am aiming at is Mato upgrading his cyberarm and Tamarind getting a new drone, but SIS can still be struggling to make rent at the same time.

Somehow, having green-toes with a literal money tree feels like bad storytelling to me. As for side business like selling clothes or gardening - if they become more lucrative than detective work (and they can with karma to nuyen) we'll have a weaker story where we do detective work for no ingame reason. So I'd suggest keeping these to RP or tuning down the potential gain in them - E.g., people cannot pay much without a repicit and we do not have a business license to sell fashion or even food.

I really like Gilga's approach here. I'd not liked the karma-to-nuyen conversion but hadn't quite been able to put my finger on it, but this catches it I think, that part of the character of this game is that money is a scarce resource.

In another campaign they use the term 'marks' for designated 'big purchase' items, to kind of the same effect ('marks' being like 'markers' rather than being currency only useful in Germany) For clarification we could talk about 'karma-to-marks conversion rate' (and if we want a karma-to-nuyen conversion as well, going to Greentoes could still be a thing, but the rate would be worse, capped more severely, and comes with the RP factor of having Greentoes insinuated in your memories). I think implicit in this idea is that the player has to produce some IC posts that justify it all, possibly starting a chapter before getting it, to reflect the process.

Something like this may make me change my plan of saving up 40 karma to buy the Lightning Reflexes quality, and actually invest in 'ware towards the same purpose! FWIW, given a method, Tamarind's big purchases are apt to be 'ware, and high end autosofts, pilots, and sensor packages for drones. You can do a lot with the right Autosofts, and Jack has pointed out. Although her big barrier there is availability rating, which I have done nothing in character creation to prepare to deal with.

Technically, what you are getting here is the negative quality "Stolen Gear" from No Future - the cost at character creation is 1 karma for 10.000 Nuyen, so after chargen you'd actually pay 1 karma per 5000 Nuyen to buy the quality off, to get rid of the people hunting you.

So yeah, basically reflavore the quality and buy it off immediately and we have the same result.

For Bobby it's only of academic interest - he has more than enough things he needs his karma for.

That is pretty close to what I have been thinking, too. Just reposting it here.



Bye
Thanee

But you do know that germany uses the Euro instead of the Mark for quite a while now, right?

Bye
Thanee

Yes but that wouldn't have made a play on words, and I'm pretty sure that sadly we are all old enough to remember the mark.

(If you see a short post from me it is likely done quickly on my phone, probably without a lot of mental editing. Apologies now for any future confusion from me being silly)

Oh, sorry, I missed that, So let's say we both agree (I don't see much difference).

And here I thought marks were Matrix authentication recognition keys.

Yes, what others are describing does sound like what Thanee mentioned earlier.

Remember that Green Toes didn't provide cash; he provided information that the team then sold. I was planning on handling it in a similar way. "XYZ component is hidden away here but not closely guarded," etc.

Also, I should say that I was (personally) planning on increasing the paydays. Part of Mato's Trust Fund - and our relocation to Bellevue - was to move us away from a mindset of scarcity. I think that mindset and tone have served us well over the last four years but now that we're rapidly retiring our debt I think we're ready for new horizons. Granted, we're simply trading one set of problems for another, but that's the drama that drives the game. If people feel differently about this, please speak up.

That said, I'm comfortable if people want a different system than straight karma-for-nuyen. That's all IC explanation for an OOC concept and I'm happy to spin things one way or the other. But what we do need is a consistent set of rules and guidelines, including a karma-for-marks exchange rate.

I think I do prefer marks to straight cash. SIS may be moving up (money from the hacker club this year, debts paid, hopefully some well paying jobs, Tecumseh's trust fund), but it is still far from rich. Still having to budget somewhat, able to spend more money on some things but not being at the point of spending money on everything.

I'm pretty adaptable to the exchange rate and how much can be done per chapter. I'm not super concerned about pace and direction of advancement, and will make priority calls based on what is decided. If we make the exchange rate higher (such as 5000:1) then then the cap should be more severe -- else the pace of gear/ware advancement will be too uncontained ... except that some cool things are just really expensive (like AM's dream deck). So maybe something like you can convert 5 points of karma for 25knY, or enough karma to cover 1/3 of a larger item (1/4?), whichever is greater. So if AM wants a Novatech Navigator or Mato wants alphaware R3 Synaptic boosters, it is a matter of how many chapters and how much other progression they give up, more than how long, to get it.

+++++++++++++++++++++++
With the doubled karma after the interlude, the final Tamarind purchases are:

Contacts:
Cutty L1C1
HiFi Phil (mechanic, Touristville) C2L1

Knowledge/language skills
Sioux Sign Lang 0->1
St.Kn.: Redmond gangs 0>1
small unit tactics 0>1
Area knowledge: Touristville 0>1

Skills:
Athletics group 0>1 (5)
Acting group 0>1 (5)

Qualities:
Subtle Pilot: groundcraft (8)

A mix of filling in some things that she likely should have had from her background (let's just say that she was rusty on them), a bit of learning the neighbourhood, plus for dealing with the public she's working hard at learning how to lie and mislead (she's still terrible at it, 3 dice instead of 1, lol).

AM would likely want a better deck, but I gave her such a diverse skillset that I always find things (mostly mundane) to sink karma into. Right now, I figured I need to work on her social skills since Jawsey left, and she gains some more experience being in the spotlight.

Chapter 9
gilga, can we get an OOC thread for Chapter 9? We should all post our sheets so that Thanee can see them (and to have Thanee's in a convenient place).

Lifestyle
Let's finalize Lifestyle costs too. Let's hold off on Bellevue for the moment while Tamarind and Raven use their Low lifestyles.. We'll keep the 7,400 Redmond cost for now. We also have 1,350 in subscriptions, for a total of 8,750. Mato's Trust Fund covers 5k and work income covers 5k. That leaves 1,250 to divide between the five of us. That provides everyone with 250 nuyen for some pocket change.

Bobby gets his 20 nuyen/week from Clive Clark the shoe seller.

I'm going to be honest that I can't remember the details with the Hackers' Club in Chapter 7, nor how much of their debt they worked off during their intel gathering during Chapter 8. I searched for a few minutes but couldn't find it. Did anyone keep better records?

Mato
I haven't spent any karma in ages so I'm sitting on 98 karma. Given his story arc - specifically Chapter 8 - it makes sense for him to be upgrading and replacing cyber right now so a lot of that is going into nuyen. Here's the high-level breakdown:

39 - Nuyen for cyber (5 at the 5k exchange rate and the rest at the 2k exchange rate)
34 - Active Skills (all from rating 1 to rating 2)
20 - Logic 4
5 - Trust Fund (not doubled due to previous Interlude reward)

I haven't spent 47 knowledge karma yet. I think a lot of that will go toward business-related skills. Some will go into Contacts too as I've been lazy about refreshing those.

@Tecumesh, I've gone over the threads. We agreed on 100k and got 30k at the end of the job. So 70k left to pay at 10k a month.
In chapter 8 - Bobby forgave 750 of the debt. So at the end of February, we only get 9250. Divided by five, it is 1850, and with the 250 we made from trust-fund and work, it is 2100 a person, which is quite nice.



With 60k left on the debt, so six more months of suffering for the rich kiddos.

Great work, gilga! I'll try to write that down on one of the wiki pages to help make it easier to remember in the future.