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Message no. 1
From: Jerry Hill <agh60070@*******.CC.UCF.EDU>
Subject: Karma and the Pedestrian (Was Re: SR Agriculture)
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 08:05:28 -0400
How does anyone else deal with Karma for people who just happen to be
around. I don't mean the karma pool on an individual basis (that's handled
with threat/professional ratings) but specifically good karma with regard to
bonding costs, the ability to quicken and/or anchor spells, etc.

I've seen some interesting ideas in the Aggriculture thread, up to and
including ending world hunger via magic. The problem I see here is that
Karma is a fairly difficult thing to quantify... How many spells can someone
quicken before they run out of karma, etc.

I think the answer to this, once I figure out how I want to deal with it,
will have quite a bit of impact on the viability of wide scale commercial
magic use in my worldview. Perhaps the average Joe should be assigned a
certain amount of karma per year or something to do with as he chooses...

Bah. I need to think about this one for a while. Any comments?


Jerry Hill
--------------------------------------------
'Rome wasn't built in a day
but it didn't take long to go up in flames'
- Electric Hellfire Club
Message no. 2
From: Airwasp <Airwasp@***.COM>
Subject: Re: Karma and the Pedestrian (Was Re: SR Agriculture)
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 09:18:03 EDT
In a message dated 4/27/98 12:12:26 PM !!!First Boot!!!,
agh60070@*******.CC.UCF.EDU writes:

> How does anyone else deal with Karma for people who just happen to be
> around. I don't mean the karma pool on an individual basis (that's handled
> with threat/professional ratings) but specifically good karma with regard
to
> bonding costs, the ability to quicken and/or anchor spells, etc.
>
> I've seen some interesting ideas in the Aggriculture thread, up to and
> including ending world hunger via magic. The problem I see here is that
> Karma is a fairly difficult thing to quantify... How many spells can
someone
> quicken before they run out of karma, etc.
>
> I think the answer to this, once I figure out how I want to deal with it,
> will have quite a bit of impact on the viability of wide scale commercial
> magic use in my worldview. Perhaps the average Joe should be assigned a
> certain amount of karma per year or something to do with as he chooses...
>
> Bah. I need to think about this one for a while. Any comments?
>
Perhaps the answer to the ending of the karma is when the desire in the world
is sated would the karma available to keep the enchanters busy would begin to
dry up, as supply meets demand, the need for the enchantments would drop off.

As for the amount of karma the average Joe gets a year, I usually roll 1d6 to
3d6 to determine how much karma an npc gets a year, or I use the Threat points
as a measure of an npcs growth in the game. Most of the time I don't worry
about and just have fun with things.

Mike
Message no. 3
From: Gurth <gurth@******.NL>
Subject: Re: Karma and the Pedestrian (Was Re: SR Agriculture)
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 20:47:10 +0100
Jerry Hill said on 8:05/27 Apr 98...

> How does anyone else deal with Karma for people who just happen to be
> around. I don't mean the karma pool on an individual basis (that's handled
> with threat/professional ratings) but specifically good karma with regard to
> bonding costs, the ability to quicken and/or anchor spells, etc.

The way I see it is that you get Karma for achieving goals. It doesn't
really matter if you know what those goals are at the time, as long as you
can look back on it later and reflect on what you achieved. For
shadowrunners, these goals are the completion of missions/adventures,
while for someone working at a McHugh's it could be becoming employee of
the month, making manager, or anything else that people doing mundane jobs
strive for (like quitting :)

--
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Neighbors, let us join today in the holy love of God and money
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Message no. 4
From: Ereskanti <Ereskanti@***.COM>
Subject: Re: Karma and the Pedestrian (Was Re: SR Agriculture)
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 22:34:46 EDT
In a message dated 4/27/98 7:11:53 AM US Eastern Standard Time,
agh60070@*******.CC.UCF.EDU writes:

> How does anyone else deal with Karma for people who just happen to be
> around. I don't mean the karma pool on an individual basis (that's handled
> with threat/professional ratings) but specifically good karma with regard
to
> bonding costs, the ability to quicken and/or anchor spells, etc.

We've got a number of ways to do it. The formost now is the rules for "Karma
and Resources" in the SR Companion as an option for the -NPC-. There is also
a rule concerning "reducing the enchantment costs for bonding" in the Grimoire
II. We do similar, but ONLY if a special object is made, and the
"anchoring/quickening" is intended for -that- object. The test makes it a bit
easier.

Yes, it -CAN- quiclky unbalance a game, but it does help to some extents.

> I've seen some interesting ideas in the Aggriculture thread, up to and
> including ending world hunger via magic. The problem I see here is that
> Karma is a fairly difficult thing to quantify... How many spells can
someone
> quicken before they run out of karma, etc.

Very, Very True....

There is another way we use here, but please remember that our games here are
what many would call "Power Games". Quest of Magic, with a rating equal to
the Anchoring T#, every net success indicates a "point of karma" for the
purposes of the "Anchoring / Quickening Cost". Rating for the Quest is
-ALWAYS- a "D" in our games, resisted with Willpower (IIRC...may have to
recheck my own notes here).

> I think the answer to this, once I figure out how I want to deal with it,
> will have quite a bit of impact on the viability of wide scale commercial
> magic use in my worldview. Perhaps the average Joe should be assigned a
> certain amount of karma per year or something to do with as he chooses...
>
> Bah. I need to think about this one for a while. Any comments?

Hope I explained things from our end at least a bit better...

-K
Message no. 5
From: Alfredo B Alves <dghost@****.COM>
Subject: Karma and the Pedestrian (was Re: SR Agriculture)
Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 19:39:00 -0500
On Mon, 27 Apr 1998 08:05:28 -0400 Jerry Hill
<agh60070@*******.CC.UCF.EDU> writes:
>How does anyone else deal with Karma for people who just happen to be
>around. I don't mean the karma pool on an individual basis (that's
handled
>with threat/professional ratings) but specifically good karma with
regard to
>bonding costs, the ability to quicken and/or anchor spells, etc.
>
>I've seen some interesting ideas in the Aggriculture thread, up to and
>including ending world hunger via magic. The problem I see here is that
>Karma is a fairly difficult thing to quantify... How many spells can
someone
>quicken before they run out of karma, etc.
>
>I think the answer to this, once I figure out how I want to deal with
it,
>will have quite a bit of impact on the viability of wide scale
commercial
>magic use in my worldview. Perhaps the average Joe should be assigned a
>certain amount of karma per year or something to do with as he
chooses...
>
>Bah. I need to think about this one for a while. Any comments?
>
>
>Jerry Hill

hmmm...I have delt with this any yet, but... when determining karma
awards for "pedestrains" keep in mind the following:
1) The risk/ stress of the person's day-to-day,
2) The amount accomplished,
3) and possibly the impact of his/her actions.

As a basis OTOMH a chart would go something like this:
Security Guard would get 1 karma per week
Security Mage would get 1 karma per 3-4 days
Corp Suit would get 1 karma per week (high stress/large impact)
Wageslave would get 1 karma per 2-3 months
Mageslave would get 1 karma per month
Reseach Magician would get from 1 karma per month to 1 karma per 2-3
days depending on research.
Study (ie at a university, but not neccissarily) would increase rate by
x2 to x4 depending on workload
Coach potato would get 0 to 1 points of karma a year

This sound any good?

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Message no. 6
From: Max Rible <slothman@*********.ORG>
Subject: Re: Karma and the Pedestrian (was Re: SR Agriculture)
Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 09:27:23 -0800
At 19:39 5/7/98 -0500, Alfredo B Alves insinuated:
>hmmm...I have delt with this any yet, but... when determining karma
>awards for "pedestrains" keep in mind the following:
>1) The risk/ stress of the person's day-to-day,
>2) The amount accomplished,
>3) and possibly the impact of his/her actions.
>
>As a basis OTOMH a chart would go something like this:
> Security Guard would get 1 karma per week
> Security Mage would get 1 karma per 3-4 days
> Corp Suit would get 1 karma per week (high stress/large impact)
> Wageslave would get 1 karma per 2-3 months
> Mageslave would get 1 karma per month
> Reseach Magician would get from 1 karma per month to 1 karma per 2-3
>days depending on research.
> Study (ie at a university, but not neccissarily) would increase rate by
>x2 to x4 depending on workload
> Coach potato would get 0 to 1 points of karma a year
>
>This sound any good?

Far too easy. Think of what a person would be like after a year in their
job, or three years. Your Security Guard gets 50 karma in a year. Your
Security Mage gets over 80. Numbers like that don't produce the quality
of employee you run into in the game-- unless your game is really
terrifying.

I distinguish between karma and experience points. XP are only useful for
raising skills, and do not contribute to karma pool, but otherwise behave
like karma. I give out XP for practice, training, study, and so on,
and karma for doing things that make a difference in the world. The
example security folks should only get karma when they have to defend
a facility or design a new kind of security procedure or something like
that. A PC doing a full-time charity job (like helping out in a hospital)
gets 1 karma per 2 weeks in my game. Take a look at
<http://www.amurgsval.org/shadowrun/learning.html>;.

--
%% Max Rible %% slothman@*****.com %% http://www.amurgsval.org/~slothman/ %%
%% "Ham is good... Glowing *tattooed* ham is *bad*!" - the Tick %%

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