From:	abortion_engine abortion_engine@*******.com
Subject:	Priorities in the SR2/SR3
Date:	Mon, 27 Sep 1999 10:28:22 -0400

> I came across this discrepancy and eventually created a house rule to
> reflect the changed priority costs. My reasoning and end ruling can be
> found here:
>
> http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lericson/sr3metakarma.html
>
Okay, here's the thing, though; so what?

Last night, stuck in a stupid city I didn't mean to be with nothing to do,
as I know no one here, I wanted to do some roleplaying. So I chatted with
some of the hotel staff, and ended up finding a couple of guys who'd played
SR, and this girl who wanted to. [SR players really are EVERYWHERE, aren't
they?] So--long story short--they all ended up in my room. Well, the two
guys already had characters, but one of the guys wanted to GM. This was fine
with me, but I didn't want to play this guy's character. And the girl didn't
have anything. So the girl and I made characters. [What a blast. I had to
keep asking questions like, "Comment est qu'on dit _fireball?_"]

Well, this left us with three very differing power levels; the experienced
guy who already had a character, long-played, the girl, who was taught well
how to min-max her character [by me], and me, playing a mage who has begun
to firmly doubt the nature of reality [spend 20 years as a mage and then get
called by Spider, see how well _you_ handle it] and was thus not the most
useful, stable guy.

Once again, long story short; despite obvious language deficiency on my part
[what university French class teaches you words like "blood magic" and
"free
spirit?"] we played, and at very different power levels. Guess who got the
most karma? The girl, for being a new player, living, playing a brand new
character, in way over her head, whipping ass nonetheless. Then me next, for
creativity and general bad-assness. No one died, no one didn't contribute.
And we're talking about differences in point values of characters along the
lines of 300 points between the top dog and my character.

My point--I do have one--is this; the stupid bloody numbers on the damned
piece of paper don't mean ANYTHING. One of my favorite things to do is play
the Pedestrian contact as my character without telling anyone, in a crowd of
munchkins. Guess who ROLEplays the best? And guess who has to be more
creative in order to survive? The numbers are meaningless; it's the
creativity that counts. All this "make everyone equal" crap is rediculous.
Real life doesn't work that way, and I don't like SR to do so. If I'm not as
smart as the other guy I work with, he's going to get promoted over me. Or I
might be smarter, but he's more charismatic, and he still gets promoted.
We're not equal; he is "better," so he gets the benefits of that. And what
is the end result? I have to try harder, work more, get creative, push my
own envelope, so that I can keep up with someone better than I am. That's
one of the reasons I still roleplay, no matter how much older or more busy I
get; it's an invaluable tool for teaching creative problem solving.

Just a point. Sick of hearing about "game balance," had to vent. How do you
fellows survive in real life?

Made little sense; not my fault. Make sun go away; shut it off; I need more
sleep.