Personally I'm a big fan of justification, but just because I like to see how the player thought their character was developing in such a fashion. Do I think they are needed? No I do not. In all actuality justifications are usually a piece of fiction, fiction that anyone on a MUSH should be able to write out and get approved. It is a hassle and in all reguards isn't that necessary.

The karma factor being what it is, is limited enough. We play a game yes, but it is VERY difficult to unbalance the game from a single character. Nobody, and I mean nobody is invulnerable in the new SR4 system. Anyone can be taken out with a little thought and effort even by a newbie. In truth, what sheet's are really typically are a ranking system between the players. A GM is going to balance a run based on the skillsets of the people involved so that it should be difficult, or challenging, but not chunky salsa time unless you are really stupid. In a way it's a catch 22. You want to progress your character, but things get more difficult so you're pretty much in the same situations most of the time unless it's a random thing dropped on you that is scaled to be fun/challenging for anyone who happens to be there.

What it comes down to is a simple factor. How much more impressive is a 6 skill over a 5, or a 7 over a 6? It's one more die. Just one. One die is rarely game breaking. Even the difference between 3 and 6 is not horrifically impressive. 1 more hit on average.

Justifications aren't needed in the new system IMHO -because- of the already limited flow of karma. People want to see their characters increase and so will write whatever they need to to swing it past the checking Staffer. It doesn't mean much at all, what it comes down to is the person has the Karma for it, they want to do it because they feel that it is their character and how they feel they'll get more enjoyment out of it.

With the limited karma why should we require justifications? Obviously they'll be increasing skills that they have found out, as a player, they needed to improve on runs and through interractions. That is justification enough, the player see's the need, the character probably see's the need as well.

As for time limits... I can see time limits being good, but when I went to school I was learning several subjects at once. I REALLY don't see why I would be limited to learning one thing at a time... Now a wait time between each increase of -that- single skill, sure, takes time to learn. Took time to get the karma too tho so I am ambivalent either way so long as I am not restricted to learning one thing at a time.

Aas for time restrictions I think that's what was being suggested. For specifc skills. I think Seattle allready has such a policy in place under SR3 you can raise what ever skills you want more or less (Though some of it needs justification at higher levels) But you have to wait X ammount of time before you can raise that same skill again.

I'm not so against that myself actualy as long as it's reasonable. Because it puts in a foced learning curve. Sure some might actually learn a skill faster than others but then others take longer too so just average it out to something reasonable for a totally ficticious setting in the first place and go to it

I see a problem with limiting the amount of skill raises, not only for reasons mentioned above but for the recurring notice of low karma.  In 1 year you'll have 60 karma.  That's it.  1 year = 60 karma.  How do you expect someone to abuse that?  Its pretty much impossible.  Why limit how many skill raises they can do?  It doesn't matter, they've played the game, earned the karma, and now are at the cap.  So they wanna spend it all now?  Fine, let them, they won't be suddenly different than they were, they'd have to micromanage just to make a dent of a notice.

Mmm, not quite. For one thing, old fuckers can still raise their skills/attributes/laserdeathrayeyes too, and the gap won't change. They'll hit the cap eventually, yes, but at any rate this isn't the main point. If you use a progressive wait structure, it hits those with higher skills (we're here operating under the assumption that they are usually older characters) harder than those with lower skills. The very nature of karma costs in the game does it by costing more karma to raise skills higher, but if they have to wait longer too, it ends up leveling it even more.

For sake of clarification: My suggestion put timers on individual attributes and skills (or it was meant to, perhaps despite the wording).? So, yeah, I agree that multiple things should be learned simultaneously.


Honestly, that's a dealbreaker for me.? Not that anyone's going to be crying if I don't eventually emerge from chargen once the site goes live, but I really can't see myself playing anywhere with a reward cap like that.? ?And I wasn't even really considering playing a karma-based life form, either.

EDIT: Removed overzealous capitalization, bold, and italics.

I think that this is basically running into two very important, but subtle, thematic questions about the nature of the game.  Even though SR4 is grittier and more realistic than SR3 it's still fairly fexible in how you want to run it.  So, in order to get a clear idea of what advancement rate is appropriate, we need to ask ourselves these two questions.
 
One, just how much 'realism' are we willing to tolerate?  This is not as easy a question as it might appear.  Too much realism in a game can very well ruin it because, let's face it, reality just isn't fun the vast majority of the time.  And that IS why we're all here, right?  To have fun?

The other question ties into the first.  Who are we, as the characters?  (This could also be phrased as "What is a shadowrunner?")  The answer to this will determine the reality we are trying to emulate.  On one end of the spectrum with regard to skills, a shadowrunner is the ultimate professional criminal.  Simply by being a shadowrunner, the implication is that few jobs are beyond his abilities, even on the lowest rungs of the profession.  If you're not this good, you're a wannabe, not even fit to be in the same room with the 'real runners' let alone try to call yourself one.  On the other end, a shadowrunner is less than slime, because while his skills aren't necessarily any better than the next example of gutter trash, he's ultimatey a sellout, doing jobs for other people instead of living on his own.  Runners die every time they go out against people with real jobs in security, because they're just punks with a bit of nuyen to spend on cybering themselves up, or maybe a little magical edge, but they're ultimately ordinary people who get in way over their heads and routinely get killed for it.

Now, there's obviously a large spectrum in between the two extremes, but karma limits push things quite a bit towards the latter.  By implementing wait times you push things even farther that direction.  How?  Simple.  In order to be extraordinary people, shadowrunners need the abilities to match that perception.  To some extent, that's going to include honing traits they didn't even know they had, or finding undiscovered talents in the heat of just trying to survive.  Yeah, joe average might need years to increase his Computer from 1 to 6, but the PCs on the MUSH probably shouldn't be Joe Average by any stretch.  They stress their bodies and minds in ways that would kill ordrinary people in the pursuit of their chosen professions, and they probably deserve a break from the limitations of the mundane for it.  That's why it's called 'karma' and not 'experience.'  It's not really a measuring stick of how much you've learned, it's a cosmic reward for surviving the worst a tough universe has to throw at you and laughing it off.

So, not to derail the topic too much, but decide what being a shadowrunner means to you, what you want out of this game, then come back and try to see if this can't be hashed out a little better.  I think you can guess my opinions pretty well

The votes seem to indicate that 44% of those partisipating would like all raises approved, have you all voted?

We don't need to level the playing field.  What we need, is an easy to use and understand system.  If you don't have wait times, people still take a long time to level up skills.  Why?  Cause of the new +awards system.  If you DO have arbitrary wait times added to skill increases you will create the confusion of: "Why did I have to wait 6 weeks just to get the karma to increase my skill from 4 to 5, and now I've got to wait 6 MORE weeks before I can raise it to 6 even though its' going to take EVEN LONGER to get the karma thanks to the diminishing returns of +awards." 

So, like a lot of things thus far.  I beg not to try and game balance those things any more than already proposed system-wise, and wait to see in the BETA whether or not any sort of game balancing is necessary.  If you wanna wait the 6 weeks between increases, cause you think its more realistic or whatever, go ahead.  We've only got 6 months to try and break the system, after that we'll be hopefully moving on to being open.   Lets give it a run for its money as best we can with 20 karma, instead of limiting ourselves to only a few attribute/skill increases in that time on our main skills.

Well to weigh in here again in this grandiose discussion.

I still think staff should give me a pony. Yet all of you buggers want my wallet! 

Well, of course.  It's such a niiiiice wallet.

Ok, the tribe has spoken.

There won't be any wait times nor justifications required for skill raises during the Beta game. If it works out, we'll retain this policy into the regular game as well.