From:	John Vots <jvots@**.KO.COM>
Subject:	Re: SR1 vs. SR2
Date:	Fri, 8 May 1998 15:08:10 -0400

>Very simple: you just had "Karma," not "Karma Pool" and "Good
Karma."

>If you wanted a re-roll, you spent a point of Karma, which was then >gone
for good. When SRII came out, I remember seeing a lot more >re-rolls than
before...

I noticed this almost immediately. In SR1 I was playing a Otter Shamanic
Adept and was scrounging every point of Karma I could so that i could
stay on par with the folks I had started to play with (They had been
playing for about a year before I joined in, big gap to fill). It was
a matter of life and death for me to burn a Karma Point for a re-roll
back then, let alone 2 for an auto success. But when SR2 came out I
all of a sudden had the "Karma Pool" that first of all took away from
Karma (boo, hiss) for skills, spells, etc. but then was only good for
making re-rolls. When that's all it is there for you might as well
use it, so it became very commonplace for one or two Characters an
fight to burn one or even two KP Points for re-rolls in SR2 where as
before you would have had been lucky to see One Karma Point spent the
entire game with SR1.

I have recently started a new campaign at a very rudimentary level and have
yet to give the first Karma reward, but now that I think about it I
think I will use the SR1 Karma rules as it is less to keep track of
and won't out of balance things at a later date. BTW, the Flaw Bad
Karma I almost see as a Merit. It will hinder you to begin with but
at a later date you will still have a big enough pool to draw on, but
will have had more Karma to spend on other things. I just have a hard
time seeing it in another light.



Jester