Message no. 1

From:	Brett Barksdale <brett@***.ORST.EDU>
Subject:	Karma for studying (was Re: Mage salaries)
Date:	Thu, 6 Feb 1997 14:46:22 -0800

I don't think I want to take the time to do this, but it's not too
hard to reverse-engineer how much karma should be awarded for basic
(i.e. non-shadowrunning) study and practice.

What you do is design several "templates" of NPCs that you think are
reasonable. For example, construct all of the skills and spells etc.
of a full-tenured university professor of magic (old Professor
Blastemgood from MITM :-) Figure out how much karma is takes to generate
that "template" and how much time a prof would have to spend to get
there. A little basic math and... viola'! You get your answer and it's
more-or-less guaranteed to work in your game world because that's how
you determined the value in the first place.

You can "optimize" the system by constructing various versions of this
professor at various points in his career to see if "upper divisional"
or "cutting edge" research/study would generate more karma/month than
learning the basics did.

Then do this for non-magical characters and see if the ratios stay
the same for non-magical skills. Of course, you may discover that it
doesn't work quite right and be filled with desire to completely revamp
the karma expenditure values.

Or maybe not... :-)

Why don't y'all give this a try and be sure to let me know the results.

- (lazy) youngin'