From:	Erik Jameson <erikj@****.COM>
Subject:	Re: SR1 vs. SR2
Date:	Thu, 7 May 1998 19:27:37 -0400

At 03:58 PM 5/7/98 -0500, you wrote:

>> When 2nd edition came out we were happy. Only the Karma Pool would later
>> become our bane (and we even award Karma sparingly when compared to
>> others).
>
>Yes. I couldn't get him to play until SR2 came out. I didn't tell him
>I was still using SR1 Karma rules, though. :)

I still use SR1 Karma Rules also.

For those that don't know, SR1 and SR2 Karma rules are very similar. SR2
brought in that Karma Pool abomination though. Didn't exist in the old days.

See, I've usually been involved with power games, tending to play our game
a little more epic, less street-level. We also usually managed to acquire
sizable karma after a year or two. If we had a Karma Pool also, we would
be throwing massive amounts of dice with every friggin' roll.

So while we recieved sizable karma awards (a few rare occassions that were
extremely difficult mentally and combat-wise, even for power PCs ( <---heh,
a funny!) we earned something like 20 Karma each; average was 8-12), we
also were spending Karma rather freely. In some cases, we would have
spent, say, 10 Karma on rerolls and bought successes and only earn 6 Karma
at the end of the session, leaving the PC with a -4 Karma deficit for the
day. Most of that Karma would have been spent just keeping our asses alive.

And with Karma awards like that our Karma Pools would have been a
nightmare. But we were at least smart enough to have never used the
concept in the first place.

I don't know, the Karma Pool thing reminds me in some ways of the "Group
Pattern" concept from Earthdawn. It's a way to try and make the PCs an
"adventuring group" instead of a disperate group of mercenaries. And I
don't like that "group" concept in SR very much; there's no way most of the
PCs would associate with each other if it wasn't a profitable business
proposition.

Erik J.